Martha & Mary Jane
The strange and overlooked world of caregiving. Plus, summer solstice in Iceland.
Spoiler Warning: Plot details from Mary Jane ahead.
“You look like you carry a lot of tension in your body, do you have any modes of expression?” It’s the opening scene of the Broadway play Mary Jane and the superintendent (Brenda Wehle) is making uncomfortable small talk with Mary Jane (Rachel McAdams) as she unclogs her kitchen sink. Bright-eyed Adams is taken aback by the question. “With everything you’re going through… I just ask because it has to go somewhere, that’s how my sister got cancer” the super adds. Mary Jane, the single mom of a 2-year-old child with an unnamed neurological disorder, Alex, who is bed-ridden in the next room, is handling her difficult situation with remarkable ease, and to an outsider, the lack of dysfunction is befuddling. There is this sense that no one can get through a tragedy without a frayed hair; eventually they will break.
“I wanted people to enter into the strangeness of this experience as opposed to the awfulness or the sweetness or the sufferi…