About the Play:

Mary Jane is a full-length drama by Amy Herzog. Following character Mary Jane as she cares for her ill son Alex, the play depicts the life of a single mother who is raising her child with the help of her female friends. A moving play about the stalwart endurance of a devoted mother, Mary Jane demonstrates the prevailing strength of the human will when fuelled by unconditional love.

Mary Jane represents the power of women and what great things can be achieved when they work together. Armed with medicines, feeding tubes, and various medical equipment, Mary Jane is a single mother and indefatigable force when it comes to caring for her young, sick child. As she 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 premiered in 2017 at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut and then opened Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop and received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play as well as an Obie Award and was a finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize honouring the best English-language women writers worldwide. The play is regularly performed in regional repertory, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female

What people say:

"Herzog at her best... Confirming its author as one of the most lucid and sensitive American playwriting voices to have emerged in the past decade." — Hollywood Reporter

"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

"A wrenching tale of everyday heroism that is all the more touching for its total lack of sentimentality. I've never seen a more honest portrayal of the day-to-day demands of caregiving, or a more moving tribute to a mother's love. It might just be Ms. Herzog's best play to date." — Wall Street Journal

"An exquisite, bracing drama...An unblinking portrayal of endurance in the narrow parallel universe of the chronically unwell, and what it's like when the walls start closing in...The writer's mix of sympathy and showmanship is gorgeously ruthless." — Village Voice

About the Playwright:

Amy Herzog is an American playwright. One of the fastest rising stars in the American theatre, her streak of success since emerging on the theatre scene from the Yale School of Drama is unparalleled. She is a recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Helen Merrill Award, the Joan and Joseph F. Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity and the New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award.