Currently running at the Manhattan Theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre until June 30, 2024
Reviewed by Cris Franco
Though national audiences got to know the very dynamic Ms. Lily Santiago when her character, the ridged, secretive Veronica, fell through the sinkhole in NBC’s hit drama LA Brea, her roots have long been in the legitimate theater. Ms. Santiago honed her craft via numerous classical theater companies performing in Shakespeare’s most demanding works including Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Measure for Measure and Red Bull Theater’s acclaimed all-female Macbeth. Santiago, who graduated from the theater program at Northwestern University as well as LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, has always had her eyes set on the stage.
That’s why it’s no surprise that Lily delivers no less than two riveting performances (portraying both Kat and Amelia) alongside Academy Award-nominated Rachel McAdams (Spotlight, 2015) in Amy Herzog’s brutally heartbreaking, yet divinely uplifting new drama Mary Jane, directed by Anne Kauffman and running at New York City’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater thru June 30, 2024.
Mary Jane, which has received four 2024 Tony Award nominations including Best New Play, employs an entirely female cast to tell the tale of the title character’s caregiving for her severely disabled two-and-a-half year-old son, Alex. Though we never see the child, Mary Jane’s small but mighty army of caregivers take us on a journey to understanding that caring for one another is humankind at its best. Making her Broadway debut, Lily Santiago powerfully plays two pivotal characters in Mary Jane’s community of caregivers: the sensitive in-home nurse Amelia and the upbeat (if somewhat evasive) music therapist Kat.
The all-female ensemble reflects the reality that caregiving isn’t a job, it’s a vocation. A vocation most often answered by women, especially women of color. A universal tale of a mother’s eternal love, it’s a gripping evening of theater where Ms. Santiago serves as the life-saving net ever poised to catch McAdams as she gracefully walks the emotional highwire of a young mother full of hope and forgiveness in an unforgivingly hopeless situation. Their performances are both emotionally shattering and life affirming.
Set in a reality always teetering between life and death, this writer was most taken by how Ms. Santiago was able to play the tense dramatic moments alongside the mundane, day-to-day tasks of caregiving with ease but urgency.
The entire cast delivers powerhouse performances by underplaying the plot’s searing reality: Alex could expire at any moment. We witness that the ladies’ caregiving goes beyond the sick boy, into caring for one another – providing the emotional support for each other to carry on in their uncertain world. The story’s parallels are powerful: we are all Alex, for no one is promised tomorrow. Mary Jane and her co-caregivers go about their duties without dwelling on the inevitable, they subtly inhabit the unfolding drama like a child’s cherished music box, slowly playing out its end. Mary Jane is almost magical in how it guides us into realizing the preciousness and precariousness of our very existence. I was mesmerized. This is a great new play.
Ms. Santiago recounts her initial reaction upon learning that she’d been cast saying, “I was shaking in my boots because I just love this play. It was one of the most incredible pieces of theater that I’ve ever read. The way Amy (Herzog) fills these characters with such life and humanity. It’s so moving to me.”
And what does she feel about the play now? “I stare at myself in mirror every day and tell myself that I must accept that this is huge and awesome!”And it certainly is.
To see the talented Lily Santiago deliver two amazing performances alongside the riveting Tony-nominated Rachel McAdams, CLICK HERE