"A Slice of Life and Death"
Plays with related subject matter often come in waves,
creating what could be called playwriting subgenres. Recent seasons, for
example, have seen what might—cheekily, of course—be called dementia porn,
boxing porn, and disaster porn. Two current plays, one I reviewed last week and
one I saw last night, have revived another subgenre, deathbed porn, plays whose
stage time is consumed principally by characters who are dying when the curtain
opens and who die (or are just about to) when it closes. Older examples would
be Whose Life Is it Anyway? and Wit, while very recent ones are Woman and Scarecrow and Peace for Mary Frances. |
| Natalie Gold, Lois Smith, Heather Burns. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
 |
Natalie Gold, Lois Smith. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Peace for Mary Frances,
produced by the New Group at the Signature’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, is
a slice-of-life and death in which a dysfunctional family with the usual
love/hate issues faces the imminent passing of their matriarch. Nonny, as she is
called, is suffering—not from anything as conventional as cancer or Alzheimer’s—but
from a breathing problem that is also causing terrible pains. It’s a situation
that—regardless of the specific idiosyncrasies provided here—is one many
audience members will definitely recognize from their own experience.
 |
| Paul Lazar, Natalie Gold, J. Smith Cameron. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
The action takes place in Mary Frances’s West Hartford ranch
house, where we see the living room/kitchen at our left and, on a raised
platform at our right, the upstairs bedroom where she spends long stretches in
bed, visited by other characters. The usually reliable Dane Laffrey has failed
to find a solution to the problem of placing two rooms on different levels on
the Griffin’s relatively narrow stage, creating what are probably the worst
sightlines of any mainstream show I’ve seen in a long time.
Chief of Mary Frances’s visitors are her middle-aged daughters,
Fanny (Johanna Day, Sweat) and Alice
(J. Cameron-Smith, “the Apple plays”), and a son, Eddie (Paul Lazar, Samara). Other family members are Alice’s
grown daughters, Rosie (Natalie Gold, TV’s “Succession”), and Helen (Heather
Burns, Dawn in the original production of Lobby
Hero). There’s also Rosie’s infant, whose frequent squalling adds one more
ingredient to sound designer Daniel Kluger’s cues for music, TV shows, rumbling
effects, and so on.
 |
| Lois Smith, J. Smith-Cameron, Paul Lazar. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Fanny, a childless, recovering drug addict, with emotional
issues, works as a security guard at the YMCA. She shares caretaking duties
with Alice, a divorcée who has given up her job as an astrologer to look after
Mary Frances (who pays her, thus planting seeds for a dispute). The sisters are
also volatile rivals for mom’s affections. The feckless Eddie, a lawyer, looks
after Mary Frances’s legal and monetary affairs. These three, with Alice’s
daughters—housewife and mother Rosie, unattached, successful TV actress Helen—must
cope with how best to navigate the physical, emotional, and medical needs of
the ailing Nonny.
 |
| Melle Powers, Johanna Day. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
As is so often the case in real life, Mary Frances, a widow
whose husband—often referred to—died 18 years earlier, is not the most pliable
of human beings. Still with her wits about her, she’s quite capable of lashing
out at family members who don’t accede to her demands or live up to her
requirements, while simultaneously realizing just how much she needs them. As
written, directed, and acted, however, her energy level sometimes makes her seem
more likely to be on the road to recovery than the one to eternal rest.
 |
| Natalie Gold, J. Smith-Cameron, Mia Katigbak, Brian Miskell. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Thus the conventional setup: a dying, suffering matriarch
needs attentive care to make her last days as comfortable as possible, which
will require regular doses of morphine. "When in doubt: medicate," goes the mantra. The bickering family is forced to consider
placing mom in an institution or opting for hospice care. We learn about the
details of hospice care from Bonnie (Mia Katigbak), the nurse assigned to look
after Mary Frances, and Michael (Brian Miskell), the psychological social
worker who offers his advice. All this material plays like an infomercial on
how to provide homecare for a loved one.
Angry flare-ups and dull discussions occupy the self-involved
family members, including one fed-up character’s physical attack on another;
Mary France fluctuates in her responses to her children and the money she plans
to leave them; Clara (Melle Powers), a round-the-clock nurse from Ghana, offers
Mary Frances much-needed solace; and time takes its inevitable course.
Directed by the ubiquitous Lila Neugebauer at a ploddingly naturalistic
pace, the episodic play’s many scenes slog along, shifting back and forth from
the bedroom to the living room, as the conversations hit one expected topic
after the other. Even the scene breaks drag: the lights fade slightly, the
actors amble off or make prop adjustments, music plays, the lights rise. When a
bit of local color is needed, we get a joke (perhaps too strong a word for it)
regarding a Jewish neighbor, or, more egregiously, the identification of Mary
Frances’s family with the Armenian genocide of 1915.
(That subject, by the way, drives Daybreak,
which I reviewed two weeks ago. It belongs to the disaster porn subgenre but
also seems to be part of a growing Armenian genocide sub-subgenre; or maybe I
feel that way because, by chance, I watched an epic movie last week about that
massacre called The Cut.)
Thorne succeeds in condensing the typical quarrels,
questions, and confusion surrounding a family’s waiting for a sick, elderly person
to die that most people encounter, but that doesn’t mean it all adds up to a
compelling play. Since Mary Frances’s fate is sealed, all Thorne can do is to gin
up tension by stirring family resentments, particularly those related to the
sibling rivalry between the unstable Fanny and the resentful Alice.
Peace for Mary Frances,
despite being far too long for its subject, would have been much more painful to
sit through with a lesser cast. While its situation is universal, its dramatization
is so ordinary it borders on cliché. When peace comes for Mary Frances it does
the same for the audience.*
Pershing Square Signature Center/Alice Griffin Jewel Box
Theatre
480 W. 42nd St., NYC
Through June 17
*I sat in front of the gracious Jeremy Irons at Peace for Mary Frances and had a nice
little chat with him about his excellent recent documentary, Trashed, concerning the huge, worldwide
problems of garbage disposal. It proved a more useful icebreaker than gushing
over his many acting accomplishments, although he appreciated my mentioning his
Masterpiece Theatre performances on "Love for Lydia" very early in
his career.
Accompanying him, in addition to his human companions, was his bichon
frise/Jack Russell mix, Smudge, who, apparently, follows his master wherever he
goes.
Smudge remained silent throughout, pondering the play's ruminations on
mortality, but at, at one point in Act II, let out a sharp bark before settling
back into his more peaceful mode. His ruff comment came at a not particularly
important moment in the proceedings, so it wasn't possible to detect in it a
canny canine's critical bow wow directed at the actors. More likely, it was the
result of a careless foot coming in contact with one of Smudge's Pinteresque
paws.
The Signature should be commended for being so open to audiences
of species diversity, although I'd like to be there when Cameron Diaz visits
with her Great Dane. I understand, by the way, that the fire hydrant outside
the theatre on 42nd St. is designated as gender neutral.
