People are vast and contain multitudes in Tracy Letts’ play “Mary Page Marlowe,” in which five actors play the title character at different stages of her troubled life. The inventory of her travails — encompassing alcoholism, multiple failed marriages and struggles with parenthood — is recounted in 11 nonchronological fragments that add up to a portrait of embattled womanhood.
Offloading to her therapist, Mary Page says she has been merely “playacting” the roles of wife and mother, and has had little agency in her life: “Like a migrating bird, I just did what seemed natural,” she says.
“Mary Page Marlowe,” which premiered in 2016 at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, had a successful run at Second Stage Theater in New York. Now, a new production directed by Matthew Warchus is running through Nov. 1 at the Young Vic in London, featuring the screen superstar Susan Sarandon as the oldest Mary Page.
Sarandon, making her London stage debut, renders the character with a controlled grace, dismissively ribbing her know-it-all husband and bantering with a nurse as she processes a terminal illness diagnosis. But this is no star vehicle: Sarandon appears in only three scenes, and it’s Andrea Riseborough, the British actress who was a surprise 2023 Oscar nominee, who puts her stamp on the character.
The play begins with Riseborough’s Mary Page in middle age, informing her two children that she intends to leave their father and move from Ohio to Kentucky, taking them with her. (They are alarmed at the prospect of living among “hillbillies.”)
We then see Mary Page as an adolescent (played by Eleanor Worthington-Cox) at a slumber party with her girlfriends, one of whom teases her for being obsessed with Paris and Audrey Hepburn — the first of several clues to Mary Page’s lifelong, restless ennui.
In her 20s and 30s, she’s a nonchalantly adulterous vixen, played with a knowing glint by Rosy McEwen. She maintains a cool distance as her married lover tries to get to know her better. This, presumably, is what she’s getting at when she tells the therapist that she sees her life in “compartments.”
The various Mary Pages leave a trail of hapless husbands and lovers, who remonstrate with her in exasperated American accents of varying consistency. A poignant scene involving her 12-year-old self (Alisha Weir) offers another clue: She misses her absent father and is obliged to fix drinks for her mother, who breezily demands an old-fashioned.
The emotional timbre is signposted by Rob Howell’s gloomily abstract set. The only furniture is a set of tables and stools, and a handful of props — a ’70s Dr Pepper bottle and a typewriter in one scene; a VCR in another — situate the action in historical time.
Risebrough’s weary, washed-out pride is the closest thing to an anchoring presence amid the cold visuals and choppy storytelling. After hospitalizing a man while driving under the influence, she accepts a prison term with self-loathing equanimity. When she discovers her teenage son’s drug stash, Mary’s parental dismay is tempered by her own hedonistic disposition. She thought acid had fallen out of fashion, but “he had this beautiful sheet!” — anger gives way to hungry envy midsentence.
This is a plangent tale of ordinary human woes, told with a disarming nonjudgmental candor. But if Mary Page’s story had been unfolded in a conventional, linear way, would it still have been interesting? Perhaps not: Though she is relatable in her flaws — stubborn, willful, prone to self-pity — her troubles can seem generic; at times, the piece feels like a deconstructed soap opera, where the challenge of piecing together the puzzle stands in for the pleasures of drama.
When Mary Page tells us that accountancy is more interesting than it looks, because you can extrapolate a detailed picture from a handful of receipts, we can sense Letts winking at the audience. It’s a neat touch, but the point is needlessly labored in a closing segment involving a quilt made up of patches depicting the lives of multiple women. We get it, Mr. Letts!
In one respect, the play succeeds too thoroughly for its own good. Using multiple actors for a single character produces an estranging effect that feels true to the what memories feel like: When we reflect on past selves, they can indeed seem like entirely different people. The downside is that the five-fifths of Mary Page add up to less than a whole person onstage, and if we can’t know her, we can’t buy into her. The result is a strangely clinical melodrama that, rather like its protagonist, never really lets us in.
Mary Page Marlowe
Through Nov. 1 at the Old Vic in London; oldvictheatre.com.
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