As Mary Jane navigates both the mundane and the unfathomable realities of caring for Alex, her chronically ill young son, she finds herself building a community of women from many walks of life.
Image: 2024 Manhattan Theatre Club Production (Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade) Get an estimateAs Mary Jane navigates both the mundane and the unfathomable realities of caring for Alex, her chronically ill young son, she finds herself building a community of women from many walks of life. Mary Jane is Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog’s remarkably powerful and compassionate portrait of a contemporary American woman striving for grace.
MARY JANE – a woman in her thirties
RUTHIE – a building superintendent
SHERRY – a nurse
BRIANNE – a Facebook friend
AMELIA – Sherry’s niece, a college student
DR. TOROS – a pediatric intensivist
CHAYA – a Hasidic woman
KAT – a music therapist
TENKEI – a Buddhist nun
“The most profound and harrowing of Ms. Herzog’s many fine plays.” – The New York Times
“Mary Jane is Herzog’s most satisfying work to date because it has verisimilitude that many contemporary realistic plays don’t.” – The New Yorker
“But Mary Jane is nevertheless a very big drama, even if its conflicts are almost never between people. They are instead between Mary Jane and her unspoken ideas about life – that is, God. To me, this makes Mary Jane the most profound and harrowing of Ms. Herzog’s many fine plays.” – The New York Times
“For a heart-piercing ride-along on the avalanche of emotion engulfing the parent of a desperately ill, incapacitated child, playwright Amy Herzog exceeds her own fine record of accomplishment with Mary Jane.” – The Washington Post
ON BREAKING CHARACTER