★★★★

“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.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★★★

“It is testament to Rice’s stylish and ingenious staging that we never lose the plot.”

The lights are dim, casting shadows on the revolving doors and liquor bottles, while silhouettes of shady figures move silently in the twilight, fedora’s tilted to shade the eyes. We expect Sam Spade to step out from the smoky, jazz rhythms; dressed in his gabardine long coat and Bogart drawl. Or Cary Grant with his transatlantic blend of cut glass and high class. But instead, Katy Owen, stalwart of Emma Rice’s ‘Wise Children’ company, trashes the fourth wall and greets us like music hall regulars. Lithe and angular, she moves like a panther high on humour and anarchic energy. She is the narrator, the professor, and other spies and deliciously unsavoury characters that fill the world Rice has created. Along with the five other cast members (is that all… there seem to be so many more?) she upturns, subverts and twists Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “North by Northwest”. ‘You’ve got to be on the ball to keep up with this’ she proclaims at the outset. Never mind being on the ball. We are clearly going to have a ball.

Newspaper headlines tell us where we are in time and context and banded suitcases let us know where we are in place, and who we are dealing with. Even so, it’s probably best to brush up on a rough synopsis before entering the auditorium. If only to appreciate the in-jokes and inventive use of props and scenery to depict the scenes. You must go and see for yourself how the iconic bi-plane chase in the cornfield is recreated. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a spy story, set in the late fifties, that sweeps across North America from New York to Mount Rushmore via Chicago. A tale of mistaken identity. Roger Thornhill (Ewan Wardrop) summons a bell boy in the Plaza hotel, New York, so he can call his mum. Two suspicious looking gangsters are watching him and assume he is George Kaplan – a spy who needs to be kidnapped and taken to their master. The ‘butterfly effect’ sets in motion a chaotic series of events whereby Roger becomes the hunted and the hunter, searching for the non-existent Kaplan (he’s an FBI made-up decoy) while being pursued by both enemies and friends of the state. Oh, and he falls in love on the way with double agent Eve (Patrycja Kujawska). Nobody is who they appear to be. It is testament to Rice’s stylish and ingenious staging that we never lose the plot.

There is a lot of multi-rolling – and gender blind is an understatement. Karl Queensborough is magnificent as the gangster ringleader Phillip Vandamn, while giving a hilarious turn as other cameos – especially Roger’s mother. Mirabelle Gremaud and Simon Oskarsson get to demonstrate their versatility as the hapless spies Anna and Valerian, among countless others. Kujawska’s Eve is suitably slippery, yet sassily sensual as the love interest we never know whether to trust or not. Despite all appearances to the contrary, Roger never loses faith (well, maybe for a moment or too – but he’s only human). Wardrop pitches the offhand charm and wit to near perfection.

As with all Rice’s shows, music is a key feature. Composer Simon Baker mixes his own sounds with classic tunes from the period. But absent is the actor-muso element. Instead, to fabulous comic effect, the cast lip synch to the musical numbers with faultless precision. Etta Murfitt’s choreography adds surreal touches that, in less able hands, could easily jar but this company are expert at combining physical theatre with drama, with comedy – and with storytelling. Owen’s narration certainly helps. A star performance, and she still has time to slip into other guises.

It is in danger of becoming a little bit muddled towards its final moments, and the same tricks are just on the brink of being overused. But as these zany, talented characters cling to the precipice of Mount Rushmore we are rooting for them, even though the suspense is lacking. We’re not entirely sure what Hitchcock might make of it all. He’d want more danger and darkness perhaps. But Rice is a master of her craft and fans of the film will love this play as much as fans of ‘Wise Children’.

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Old Vic

★★★★

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

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Old Vic

Reviewed on 8th October 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MARY

MARY

MARY

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★★★

“It is testament to Rice’s stylish and ingenious staging that we never lose the plot.”