Review: MARY JANE at Three Bone Theatre

Caring is rather easy when we’re not tasked to care about everything, but caregiving, even when it’s 24/7 for a little pet– let alone for a person or a close relation – can be frustrating, exhausting, and draining. We find out, to our shame and distress, that our supply of caring can run perilously low. Or out.

In Amy Herzog’s MARY JANE, now at The Arts Factory through February 23, we encounter a mother who is in over her head providing care for her prematurely born Alex, a good-looking kid that has yet to be fed by mouth or say a word at the age of three. Herzog was in that fix herself when her play premiered at Yale Rep in 2017, six years before her daughter Frances succumbed to nemaline myopathy. In a series of meticulously observed and crafted scenes, she gets it right.

So does Three Bone Theatre in this intimate black-box production directed by Robin Tynes-Miller. Sometimes humorously – even inspirationally – amid the ongoing gloom.

Mary Jane, we quickly realize in the first of five scenes at her one-bedroom apartment in Queens, can’t do it all herself. The bedroom and the IV stand she wheels out of it are Alex’s, she’s trying to catch up on her rest on a pullout couch in the living room/kitchen, while building superintendent Ruthie is trying to unclog her sink. Ruthie also tosses in some free health tips, possibly because Mary Jane has offered her a Coke.

Not only does Mary Jane flip over to being a care-getter (shouldn’t that be a word?), she also becomes a care advocate when Ruthie notices that Mom has removed the bars from the window, a violation of building code rules, to give Alex a better view of the outdoors. So that Coke might also be a shrewd investment.

Sherry is Mary Jane’s best in-home resource, an RN who reminds Mom of things she has forgotten to buy, and the professional who shows aides the ropes when they come for their first shift at the apartment. One of them has failed to show up for her shift, but Mary Jane would rather not have Sherry report her. She can empathize: her own job is hanging by a thread after using up all her vacation days and sick leave halfway through the year.

As Ruthie divines in the opening scene, self-care has already become a problem for Mary Jane after dealing for three years as a mom with such heavy burdens and responsibilities. Especially after Dad has had a panic attack, fled, and left her alone to cope with it all.

In Scene 3, the briefest of the scenes, we do see Mom carving out a glowing moment of respite and reflection for herself, another deft touch that makes Herzog’s drama feel so lived-in. And feminine. No less revelatory, for Mary Jane and for us, is the satisfaction of sharing her knowledge and experience with Brianne, a rookie special needs mom, trembling and weeping as she feverishly takes notes. What Mary Jane accepts as normal and routine, she now realizes, is quite daunting and unnerving.

Whether or not her session with Brianne has buoyed her spirits, we find that Mary Jane appears to be battle-tested in the ensuing scene when Alex has a seizure and they call 911. The new aide, Amelia? Not so much.

Herzog has asked that her drama be presented without intermission, but she also created an emphatic break in the middle, where the scene changes amid suspense. The convertible sofa bed may never open on Ryan Maloney’s clever set, but the entire upstage wall revolves as Mary Jane’s junior apartment morphs into a “parents room” at a local hospital.

Now Mary Jane is in the belly of the medical beast as an urgent care seeker. As the hospital stay drags tensely on and her job security becomes more tenuous, we can add care negotiator and health care system navigator to her skill set. Interestingly enough, Herzog gives all the helpers who gathered at Mary Jane’s apartment new lives – or at least new roles – at the hospital.

So while Nonye Obichere is unquestionably the star, the woman striving most heroically to cope, Tynes-Miller can surround her with a fine quartet of supporting players and dole out juicy dual roles to them all. Amid all the tension and crisis, it’s possible to find Cate Jo annoying and adorable in her dual roles. Amelia is new to New York, gleaming in her fresh naïveté, and a bit nervous about her first encounter with Alex. That compounds the drama later on when she fumbles for her phone, losing precious seconds before she can make the 911 call.

Jo is a different shade of green at the hospital as Kat, the blithe music therapist with a talent for vanishing when urgently needed and then showing up at the wrong time. It’s a treat when Jo brings Kat down from her cloud to show some warmth.

Lisa Schacher gets to move across the straightest line between her two roles, Sherry the RN in Part 1 and pediatrician Dr. Toros at the hospital. There’s a nice contrast between Sherry’s chummy geniality and Doc’s professionalism and defensiveness, but nothing special enough for me to grasp how the actress playing these roles Off-Broadway could have been nominated for an award.

If it were the plummy roles that Maci Weeks gets to play, no problem. After feasting on the ultra-distress of Brianne as she takes new-mommy notes at the Queens apartment, Weeks noshes on the ultra-calm of Chaya, unflappable mother of seven, including one of Alex’s roommates. Herzog leaves us two earmarks that Chaya is a Hassidic Jew, specifying a smaller kosher refrigerator in the parents' room and an open prayer book in Chaya’s.

I’m not sure Tynes-Miller and crew provide either of those things. Big bold Hebrew letters should be clearly visible in a Haredi prayer book. No English if you’re as nonchalantly fruitful as Chaya. That’s how we roll.

Otherwise, the clothes are right and Weeks’ brusque manner is perfect. Chaya and Mary Jane can agree on being appalled by the lack of visitors for the third lad in their children’s room, but Chaya’s kid has so many visitors that it took a while for Mary Jane to tell which couple were the parents. With that kind of community support from Alex’s family, we can divine that Mary Jane would have less need for rest, therapy, and answers.

Naturally curious – and finally speaking with Chaya – Mary Jane begins to test the idea of consolation through religion, a shortfall she’s beginning to feel as strongly as the absence of family. Herzog builds nicely to this shift when Banu Valladares, previously Ruthie the super, reappears in all her willowy splendor as Tenkei, a newly ordained Buddhist nun raised Episcopalian. Somehow we feel, after all the care that Mary Jane has received, the serene and ethereal Valladares as Tenkei is just what she needs.

Through nine beautifully modulated scenes, Obichere suffers greatly, matures a little, and shows impressive steel over and over. A lot of thought has to go into being as articulate and courageous as Mary Jane - yet credibly finding herself so abandoned in a dinky Queens apartment. Hey, I grew up in Queens, so I’m an expert.

From the moment she first spoke on Saturday night, in a thinner, half-octave higher voice than I’ve heard before, I knew that Obichere had immersed herself in Mary Jane as deeply as she had plumbed Sara’s depths in Confederates a year ago. If you saw her then, you already know you shouldn’t miss her now.

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