Mary Page Marlowe review – Susan Sarandon makes her UK stage debut as a life is compellingly pieced together

What is the significance of an ordinary life?  Are there turning points where we could engineer change or does existence just unfold with an inevitability that we barely notice?

These are the questions raised by this intriguing new play by Tracy Letts, first seen on Broadway in 2016 and now given its British premiere in a production that stars Susan Sarandon (making her UK stage debut) and Andrea Riseborough at the head of a large and distinguished cast.

The drama unfolds in 11 non-chronological scenes taking the titular heroine from cradle (where she is played by a doll) to the grave. The gimmick is that this one woman is embodied by five different actors: Sarandon (at the ages of 59, 63 and 69), Riseborough (40, 44, 50), Rosy McEwen (27, 36), Eleanor Worthington-Cox (19), and Alisha Weir (12).

They share reddish hair but are like different people, revealing different qualities of her life. Weir gets Mary’s troubled childhood, Worthington-Cox her bold determination to live life on her own terms, McEwen the early years of marriage and subsequent promiscuity, Riseborough a descent into unhappiness and alcoholism, Sarandon a glimmer of hope and a kind third husband (in the charming shape of Hugh Quarshie).

The effect is like watching fragments of a shattered vase, glued back together. The pieces don’t quite fit and the cracks start to show, but the truthfulness of the writing  – and of the performances – is the way that they suggest that behaviour is not always tangential. Bad choices are made, and generational trauma is handed down. But also, things happen. Dreams die.

All of this is presented in dialogue that is always flexible and full of humour. Towards the end Sarandon, whose easy stage presence and command are as impressive as her film-star credentials, has a brief conversation with Melanie La Barrie’s down-to-earth Nurse, wryly joking about numbers of children and husbands, even as she collapses in sadness at all the mistakes she has made. It’s remarkably poised; sad but never mawkish.

The production is performed in the round, which lends intimacy to Matthew Warchus’ fluent, understated direction, but which also dissipates tension as props are moved between scenes on Rob Howell’s simply structured set. The costumes subtly suggest the era each scene happens and Hugh Vanstone’s lighting controls the mood.

But it is the acting, particularly of the Marys, that carries the day. Riseborough is an actor who always seems to be missing a skin; she brings all that raw intensity and eyes full of emotion to the scenes where Mary battles with divorce and despair; McEwen captures both the underlying instability and the bold determination to reject male expectations that drives Mary to both therapy and casual, pointless affairs.  In their single scenes, both Worthington-Cox and Weir seize their moment with coruscating honesty and openness. Apart from Quarshie, all the men are ciphers, but Eden Epstein is compelling as Mary’s mother Roberta.

In their hands, this odd conceit just about works, creating images of a life both lived and wasted, pre-ordained and chosen.