MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Old Vic

★★★★

“The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed”

If you break a hologram, the original image remains visible in each fragment, but the viewing angle for each piece is narrower, like looking through a smaller window. Every fragment shows the whole picture, but from a different perspective.

Tracy Letts’ intriguing play, “Mary Page Marlowe”, is constructed along similar lines. Carefully selected moments, some mundane and some pivotal, are patch-worked together in no particular order to paint a full, yet intimate, portrait of a woman. An “unexceptional” woman, according to the titular character herself. The experience for the audience, though, is quite the opposite. It is an exceptional and extraordinary play in which time is random. Five actors perform the role of Mary Page Marlowe, charting seventy years of her life over the course of eleven short scenes. A cradle to grave story (the baby Mary is represented by a doll – a less risky proposition than having a real baby onstage as in the premiere nine years ago in Chicago) that spirals around the life of Mary Page – along with her three husbands, two children, alcoholic mother, palliative nurse, therapist, lover… and so on.

We first see her explaining how her divorce will affect and uproot her children, before we flip back to her bright and buoyant schooldays, before fast forwarding to her twilight years. She is then a baby, mewling and puking; and then the lover, sighing like a furnace. There are indeed reflections on Shakespeare’s seven stages of life, albeit as though the bard had thrown his folio into the air and let the pages fall haphazardly around him.

Each scene is succinct and stand alone in its own right; with outstanding, natural performances from the entire cast. The common thread is often missing, however, and we feel that we are not watching the same woman in different stages of her life, but many people’s stories. The distancing of emotional connection that this results in is compensated for, however, by the ingenious structure and Matthew Warchus’ sublime direction. Staged in the round, it emphasises the concept that past, present and future are as one. When the telephone rings at the end of one scene, the weight of its significance is truly felt because we have already seen what comes after.

Each Mary is highly watchable. Alisha Weir’s twelve-year-old Mary is a convincing mix of obstinance and innocence whose rose-tinted view of life is already eroded by her late teens: Eleanor Worthington-Cox captures the ambiguity of hope versus disillusionment in denial. The more Mary ages, the stronger the characterisation. Rosy McEwen, as Mary the adulteress, is a personality to be reckoned with, while Andrea Riseborough lights up the stage every time she appears with her brutally honest energy and physicality, steering Mary on a crash course off the rails. Many people may be drawn to this show by the casting of Susan Sarandon, but the play is, by no means, a vehicle for starry casting. Sarandon has as little stage time as the others, and she uses it as efficiently. Poised and in complete control, Sarandon evokes regret and sadness with a stoicism that matches her presence.

The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed. Kingsley Morton’s schoolfriend, Connie, is a very funny breath of fresh air. Melanie La Barrie’s nurse is wryly comic but wise. A wisdom that is perhaps missing from Mary’s mother, grippingly portrayed by Eden Epstein. The moods are heightened by Hugh Vanstone’s sensitive lighting, but occasionally dampened by some overlong scene changes.

Despite all, however, Letts’ storytelling is a bit of a puzzle and, at times, hard work. The scrambled record of events can be distracting and the true hold on our attention is sometimes out of reach. We are never really let into the life of Mary Page Marlowe. The play hides as much as it reveals, which is part of its charm, but it is also frustratingly inconsequential. Letts wants us to question how much we can really know a person – even ourselves. We are teased into wanting to find out the answer, but left hanging. However, the meaninglessness (for want of a better word) is, in turn, inconsequential. We are won over by the truly mesmerising ensemble cast.

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Old Vic

Reviewed on 8th October 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE BRIGHTENING AIR | ★★★★ | April 2025

A CHRISTMAS CAROL | ★★★★★ | November 2024

THE REAL THING | ★★★★ | September 2024

MACHINAL | ★★★★ | April 2024

JUST FOR ONE DAY | ★★★★ | February 2024

A CHRISTMAS CAROL | ★★★★★ | November 2023

PYGMALION | ★★★★ | September 2023

MARY

★★★

“It grips with urgency at its best, drifts and confuses at its weakest”

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies remains one of the most unsettling explorations of human behaviour. Nigel Williams’s 1995 stage adaptation brings the novel’s familiar story of boys stranded on an island into sharp relief, and Anthony Lau’s new production reframes it through stripped-back staging and a series of meta-theatrical touches. The result is uneven, at times thrilling, at others frustrating but never without interest.

The evening begins not with the boys’ arrival but with two stagehands hoovering the bare stage. When the house manager hands Piggy (Alfie Jallow) a sheet of trigger warnings to read aloud, the fourth wall is already gone. It is a playful yet unsettling opening, reminding the audience of the artifice before the story has even begun. Georgia Lowe’s set is pared back to black flight cases representing the trunks that fell from the sky when the boys’ plane crashed. The backstage area is exposed, also painted black, with rubber mats stretched across the thrust. There is no attempt to suggest a lush island, beautiful but dangerous. Instead the stage feels stark, industrial and alien.

The soundscape by Giles Thomas is striking, shifting from pounding music that vibrates through the auditorium to complete silence. In these moments the boys’ breathing and the hum of the lights are uncomfortably audible. Matt Daw’s lighting alternates between dazzling brightness, exposing every detail, and shadowed moments that heighten tension and allow the boys’ fear, viciousness and isolation to take hold. Fire is represented by hand-held smoke machines, a simple but effective image.

At the centre of the story are five more developed characters: Ralph (Sheyi Cole, making his professional debut), Piggy, Jack (Tucker St Ivany), Roger (Cal O’Driscoll) and Simon (Ali Hadji-Heshmati). The rest of the company blend into their factions, slipping convincingly between roles as loyalists and hunters. The cast vary in age, all young adults, some more convincing as schoolboys than others. Jack, used to the discipline and authority of the choir, is played with an edge of entitlement, contrasting with Ralph’s more open leadership and Piggy’s marginalised intelligence.

The decision to cast both Ralph and Piggy with Black actors adds a further social dimension, sharpening the sense of exclusion Piggy experiences and subtly shifting the class divide already present in Golding’s story. Jallow is exceptional, capturing both wit and vulnerability, anchoring the play’s moral weight. His awkwardness and honesty make him deeply affecting, and his distinct costume marks him out as different, reinforcing his insecurity. Hadji-Heshmati’s quiet collapse in Act Two, left alone with his fractured thoughts, provides one of the most powerful acting moments of the evening.

Lau’s direction keeps the energy high but sometimes at the expense of clarity. The use of house lights, scene changes in full view, and the cast announcing acts underline the theatrical frame. At times this feels fresh, but it also distances the audience from the emotional heart of the story. The production reaches its peak at the end of Act Two with Simon’s death. Staged with intensity and haunting imagery, it captures the chaos of the boys’ descent into violence. Here the stripped-back design, movement (Aline David) and fight direction (Bethan Clark) come together with real force, creating a sequence that is both shocking and unforgettable. Not all effects are as successful. A piñata, intended to represent the pig, once bashed by the boys spills sweets in a way that feels inconsistent with the production’s stripped-back design and stark atmosphere. Where Simon’s fate resonates, other symbolic choices jar, leaving the evening uneven in tone.

Too often the pacing falters. Scenes stretch, direction loses focus and the power dissipates. Themes and emotional beats become repetitive. The second death, though still disturbing, does not match the earlier high point.

This Lord of the Flies has moments of brilliance, particularly in its sound, its bold design choices and in Jallow’s performance, but the whole is inconsistent. It grips with urgency at its best, drifts and confuses at its weakest.

Tag Archives: Manuel Harlan

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

★★★★

Old Vic

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Old Vic

★★★★

“The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed”