Peace for Mary Frances
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Cititour.com Review
“Have you ever seen a worse family than this?”, the rather sensible Rosie (Natalie Gold) asks a visiting social worker at the beginning of Act II of “Peace for Mary Frances,” Lily Thorne’s debut play now being presented by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Lila Neugebauer’s unsteadily directed production.
Unfortunately, the question is patently absurd. Sure, adult siblings Alice (the excellent J Smith-Cameron), still brooding about past slights and constantly whining about her lack of income, and hot-tempered, former drug addict Franny (a wonderfully convincing Johanna Day) haven’t been behaving all that well as their mother lays dying in their childhood West Hartford home.
But let’s be real: the Davidian clan – which also includes the women’s milquetoast sibling Eddie (Paul Lazar) and Rosie’s younger sister, unhappy TV actress Helen (Heather Burns) -- has a long way to go if they’re going to hold a candle to the Westons of “Orange: Osage County,” the Tyrones of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” or even the Conners of “Roseanne.” I’m not even sure they’re that much worse than the families of some of the audience members.
More to the point, while you might initially think the goings-on of this dysfunctional family was meant to be the main dish of this slightly unwieldy, 2-hour-and-40 minute work, the reality is that it’s ultimately the mashed potatoes and peas and carrots to the filet mignon: the plight of ailing Mary Frances, brought magnificently to life by the legendary Lois Smith in another titanic performance.
While the terminally ill, 90-year-old wants nothing more than to go gently into that good night in her own bed, we pray she’ll make it through another day –or at least another scene – since Smith and her flinty alter ego are the most interesting things to be found on Dane Laffrey’s bi-level set. Make no mistake: she’s no walk in the park to be around even in her more lucid moments: screaming at Alice about spending money on name-brand toilet paper while there are millions in her bank account, berating Eddie about how the tax returns are being filed, and alternately embracing the troubled, love-starved Franny and throwing her out of the house for her antics.
But the beauty of Smith’s honest-to-the-bone performance is how stunningly the actress fully captures the frustration of a woman who wants nothing more than eternal peace yet is caught in a war zone (partially of her own making). Even more poignantly, Mary Frances is trapped in a battle inside her own head. As visiting no-nonsense nurse Bonnie (a fine Mia Katigbak) tells Mary Frances: she has “unfinished business,” and we eventually realize that what’s really stopping her passage to the great beyond is her unwillingness to fully voice the truth about her past.
Thankfully, in a gorgeous almost-monologue near the play’s end, performed to utter perfection by Smith, Mary Frances finally admits –to the air, to her ghosts, to Alice – about how she was mistreated by her philandering, penny-pinching, wife-beating late husband and how he manipulated his mother (an Armenian immigrant) into making the young Mary Frances feel bad about herself. Sure, the speech is a bit heavy on exposition, but it’s beautifully realized and explains a great deal of how she (and we) got here from there.
Sadly, whether or not you’ll still be interested enough to care by that point is a far more potent question than the one Rosie asked earlier.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
thenewgroup.org/peaceformaryfrances.html
Cast
Lois Smith, Heather Burns, Johanna Day, Natalie Gold, Mia Katigbak, Paul Lazar, Brian Miskell, Melle Powers, J. Smith-Cameron
Open/Close Dates
Opening 5/8/2018
Closing 6/17/2018
Box Office
212-279-4200
Theatre Info
Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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