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When Lauri suggested seeing a show in Chicago for my birthday (on the way to Kalamazoo), I left it to her to pick which one. For one thing, she's more likely to have already seen any of the current shows (and therefore might want to try something new), and for another, she'll know the buzz about what's likely to be good. She picked "Mary Page Marlowe" on the sound objective basis of personal connections to two people involved in the production (who, by unfortunate chance, were not actually present on the day we saw it, alas).

"Mary Page Marlowe" falls solidly in the category of "high concept", presenting a non-linear narrative of the troubled life of an American "everywoman", using multiple actresses to represent different stages of her life. In theme, this is perhaps the female parallel to the vast body of plays that ruminate on the life crises of the middle-American man, his relationships, his personal failings, and the overall meaninglessness of life. Not that that's a bad thing. It's quite refreshing to see women's lives treated as worthy of the same intense scrutiny and consideration. And it isn't simply a tour through the effects of multi-generation alcoholism, the personal consequences of failed relationships, the ways in which our parents fail us and we in turn fail our children, and all the usual stapes of the genre. It touches specifically on the gendered nature of these experiences and trips the viewer up when we jump to conclusions based on gendered expectations (e.g., regarding the reason for the divorce that is the focus of the opening scene).

Given my enjoyment of works that require the consumer to puzzle one's way back from clues to construct the over-arching story, you would correctly conclude that I found the non-linear, patchwork nature of the narrative enjoyably challenging. We jump around from the title character's first divorce, to college days, to end of life, to infancy, with other stops along the way. Each scene presents threads that tie in with the others, and only when all of them are laid out does the whole picture make sense. Or--having used the patchwork image--I might tie it in with the final scene where a late-in-life Mary Page Marlowe is discussing the cleaning of an heirloom patchwork quilt with a dry-cleaning attendant, while debating with herself whether the object actually has any sentimental value to her at all.

Unfortunately, the patchwork quilt metaphor is a bit too offhand to make a satisfying concluding connection for me. (It took until the very end of the scene for me to figure out exactly what the object was whose cleaning was being discussed.) There were a few other aspects where the concept required too great a leap of connection (even for me!) and so left me confused and scrambling rather than enjoying the challenge. The use of multiple actresses makes a great deal of sense given the age-span of the character they represent (as well as giving greater scope for the ensemble cast), but it meant that I experienced a bit of generational confusion, at first taking the protagonist's mother for another iteration of the protagonist. (I should have been cued by the costuming, but failed on this point.) I also conflated two of the protagonist's husbands due to a combination of name/face-blindness and the changed expectations of the multi-actor approach.

So instead of the final scene wrapping up the central character's life tidily so that all the elements settled into place, I was still sorting out exactly who came in which order, who was and wan't alive, and exactly how many different people I was keeping track of. In some similar cases, a second viewing of the show would be worth while, but this is a case where a lack of spoilers is essential for getting the full intended impact.

So, all in all, I enjoyed it. It was challenging and the performance was solid. I really liked the concept of the non-linear/mystery structure. But there were aspects of the execution of that structure that didn't entirely work for me.