This play is a great example of why I have season tickets - It would be very difficult to get me out of the house and up to the Seattle Center for a play about a single mother dealing with a massively ill child. But I'm glad I did because it was a deep, natural, resilient, and resounding performance that left me more than a little shaken.
Brenda Joiner is Mary Jane, and woman consumed by the tragedy of her chronically ill young son Alex's health, stricken with a slew of illnesses. Her old life of marriage and school was blasted away by the needs of her child, and she is transformed into a full-time caregiver. It is stressful and oppressive, but Mary Jane is at her core a nice, good-hearted person, as are the rest of the women she encounters as she tries to navigate the stormy waters of tending to her son's health. She is warm with her super and with the in-home nurses, and supportive of other parents who are just starting to deal with their own, similar challenges. Fate and health and bureaucracy are the villains here, and Mary Jane and the others are challenged to deal with it. Joyner through all of this is amazing as a woman who is increasingly stressed by immovable fates.
The play is split into two parts - the first in her apartment, where Alex is heard only through the machines that monitor him and keep him alive. After a health crisis, the stage itself splits open to be a hospital scene. The other players take double roles, both in the home and the hospital. Shaunyce Omar is bpth Sherry, the longest-tenured of the in-home nurses, (the rest cycling through) and also the direct Doctor Toros dealing with Alex's case. Anteia DeLeaney is both Sherry's shy niece and the music therapist at the hospital. Andi Aldhadeff is both a mother in both cases, the first seeking advice on how to navigate the health-care system, and the second as one with a huge supportive family with their own child in the hospital. Amy Thone is both the understanding building super and hospital clergy (Buddhist). Each of these actors transform themselves in their roles, creating different pockets of strength for May Jane.
The play itself is natural in its language and interactions, and incredibly real. People talk over each other, thoughts are abandoned, things are left unsaid, feelings are spared but shattered in any event. Mary Jane is through it all is a rock, a positive force, even as she is aware of not only the fact that her old life is gone, but that future opportunities and experiences may never happen.
This was a very traumatic play for me, for several personal reasons. At the final blackout I was unaware that the play itself ended, and must of the audience was also silent at the end until the lights came back up. It was a good play, with excellent performances, and I was both troubled by it and glad for the experience that it shared. But yeah, theatre is supposed to do that sometimes, and it was well worth it.
More later,
