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The Healing Power of Love and Lack Thereof Review by: Beth M, Nov 29, 2007 |
A.R. Gurney's "Crazy Mary"
By Beth Mandelbaum
I found A.R. Gurney’s Crazy Mary to be a well written and “well felt” play that I found both tragic and funny, fascinating to watch and filled with the kind of fantasy that I personally find intriguing. The acting here is superb.
The play also poses issues and questions about the causes and nature of mental illness. It takes a hard and honest look at the motivations of people. ... read more Another key theme is the healing power of love and the sadness that occurs when love is lost. As a play about how people and events can strongly impact on the lives of others, “Crazy Mary” is a very fine study in how the impact can be a force for good or a force for personal destruction.
The play’s protagonists are Lydia (wonderfully acted buy Sigourney Weaver), a mother, her son Skip (very humorously and rather bitingly played by Michael Esper), the director of the Sanitarium, Jerome (played by Mitchell Greenberg, a nurse, Pearl (excellently portrayed by Myra Lucretia Taylor), and in the title role, the ever fabulous Kristine Neilson, whose work in Miss Witherspoon, also at Playwrights Horizons, is still very fondly in memory.
Personal transformation at many levels is major theme of Crazy Mary. The title character, a woman who barely speaks or shows any affect, transforms into what would appear to be an entirely different persons through the healing power of deep friendship, perhaps even love. It is so striking how one person, in this case, Skip, can create such an astounding and positive change in another human being; how a genuine friendship and relationship can so brighten another’s life. And, in addition to the title character, we are witness to a significant transformation in the lives of both Lydia and Skip as a result of their experience with Mary.
In terms of Mary’s relationship with Skip, it would seem that the extreme changes in Mary’s personality and behavior are not possible, if one considers this from the point of view of literal reality. And yet, to me, one can suspend the need for this to conform with the real as one watches this journey. And for me, the seeming impossibility, the fantasy, that we are experiencing, is what gives this play so much of its charm. What seems totally impossible or at least, extremely unlikely, can give way to a wonderful story. One has to let go of reality as one would expect it, and take delight in the “impossible.”
Back to the real: Lydia has come to visit Mary with less than altruistic intentions. Sigourney Weaver does an excellent job of portraying a rather cold, self centered and controlling woman. But as a result of her experience with Mary and also because she is willing to take a closer look at the needs of her son, by the end of the play we come to see Lydia in a very different way, as someone who seems far more “human” with a much altered view about life and family. She finally takes on a new voice, as someone who is finally taking responsibility for her family for the right reasons. She is now able to express her emotions in a genuine way and has developed a greater maturity, sense of generosity and sensitivity.
And skip is able to break away from the confines and expectations of his mother (and of society in general) by gradually and then finally deciding to leave his studies at Harvard, giving up having to live up to the required image and status that comes from a role that seems to have thrust upon him, and in which he is personally unhappy.
Through her friendship with Skip, whom she has asked to come back to visit with her after they first met with Lydia, Mary literally relives her life as a much younger woman. Skip has suddenly triggered Mary going back in time in her mind and in her heart to a point where she had experienced great happiness in a relationship with a young man, whose banishment by her family preceded her being sent away by her family to live in the sanato |
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I saw this show with:
Spouse/Partner
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Recommended for:
Seniors, Tourists, Adults
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