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The subtext of the scene is that the doctor, leaving room for hope, is gently trying to get the mother to realize the bleakness of her child’s prospects and thus better weigh the risks and benefits. Herzog’s skill as a writer means that you feel the conversation alongside McAdams’ character, you are alongside her on a journey no one wants to take. As the 95-minute show progresses, the audience becomes oriented on Mary Jane’s world and gets up to speed on her son Alex’s condition. Mary Jane’s daily schedule revolves around medications, machines, timers and very little sleep. Alex has been assigned a fleet of night nurses, but Sherry (April Matthis), who has worked with the mother and son for the past year, is the most consistent and dependable. Her nurturing energy extends beyond the young boy to Mary Jane, making the trio a makeshift family.
The Conners Is Losing Its Wednesdays-at-8 Time Slot on ABC — Find Out Why
It’s a tricky system to capture in a tight play with a five-person cast and sparse, economical staging at the Samuel J Friedman Theatre, but it’s one this Broadway edition, directed by Anne Kauffman, manages to wrangle through the nucleus of Mary Jane. She’s the center of a network of women who help care for Alex, from contracted at-home nurses to emergency room doctors to supportive parents of fellow chronically ill children. The first half of the play takes place in Mary Jane’s Queens apartment, which is small, bright and lightly cluttered and which levitates to reveal a sterile, eerily white hospital set for the second half.
Series Cast 11
There is an exquisite grasp here of the feeling that Karen Carpenter was expressing in the song where she sang “Don’t they know it’s the end of the world,” the bizarre disconnect those under familial stress feel from a world that refuses to stop or even slow down. During her tenure as Mary Jo Shively on Designing Women's seven-season run, Annie Potts, now 71, also landed several film roles in iconic movies, including Pretty in Pink, Jumpin' Jack Flash and Ghostbusters II (after starring in the first film in 1984). Dixie Carter began her career in TV in the 1970s, with her first onscreen credit coming from The Edge of the Night.
Season Info
All this happened without a major overhaul to Michael Greif’s production, which has a book by Kristoffer Diaz. The cast and creative teams are essentially the same, and there have been judicious tweaks and trims rather than radical changes. The main differences are further refined technical elements and, most important, a subtle but crucial change in focus. In 1993, she lent her voice to the Pink Panther series and later appeared on High Society, Style and Substance, In-Laws, 24, Samantha Who and more voiceover work on the Disney Channel series Kim Possible — to name a few.
In 1976, she also originated the role of Melba Snyder in Broadway's Pal Joey. After starring as Julia Sugarbaker on all seven seasons of Designing Women, she played Randi King on Family Law beginning in 1999. All the actors in “Mary Jane” save for McAdams portray dual characters in the first two acts. Jared Janas and Brenda Abbandandolo, respectively, work well.
Jane by Design — Cast & Crew Cancelled
Hard to think of another play that understands so well. Potts married husband James Hayman in 1990, and they later welcomed two children together. Potts is also mom to son Clay Senechal, whom she shares with ex-husband B.
Full Broadway Cast Set For the Premiere of MARY JANE, Starring Rachel McAdams - BroadwayWorld
Full Broadway Cast Set For the Premiere of MARY JANE, Starring Rachel McAdams.
Posted: Thu, 01 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Jane Quimby (Erica Dasher), an average, everyday 16-year-old girl, winds up with a job at the prestigious fashion company Donovan Decker and a chance to work with a world-famous designer, Gray Chandler Murray (Andie MacDowell) and her quirky co-workers, Jeremy Jones (Rowley Dennis), India Jourdain (India de Beaufort). They do not know how old she is or that she is still in high school. Here you will find an overview of the cast & crew of the Jane by Design series from the year 2012, including all actors, actresses and the director. When you click on the name of an actor, actress or director from the Jane by Design series, you can view more films and/or series by him or her. A teenager leads a double life as a high-school student and an assistant to a fashion executive. And so much does she desire Alex’s comfort, his fleeting moments of child joy, despite tubes and immobility and illness.
The play has a hypnotic, suffusive effect – there’s not one heartbreaking or cathartic moment but a series of many wins and setbacks, hurdles and sprints of human care, that left me on the verge of tears for hours afterwards. In her small gestures – climbing into bed with Alex, reassuring him that “Mama’s here” – McAdams, with the chorus of help around her, conjures a world of compassion, one I missed when it was over. Alex, the two-year-old child at the center of Amy Herzog’s excellent play Mary Jane, is a constant presence on stage, despite never showing his face nor saying a word. Alex can’t, actually, vocalize anything – he was born with a paralyzed vocal cord, his endearingly peppy mother explains, along with other health conditions such as cerebral palsy, requiring round-the-clock care.
The power of the performance lies in McAdams’ ability to deglamorize herself without letting that undermine the formidable, everyday optimism of this character. How could all of this happen to her, you keep thinking, letting the play send your mind spinning as to what life for Mary Jane would have been like without this challenge. “Mary Jane,” which stars the excellent Rachel McAdams in the title role and was first seen at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2017, is a closely observed play, reflective of the same attention to detail that its title character showers on her child, who has cerebral palsy.
A teenager lands a job at Donovan Decker, a hip fashion house, when they mistake her for an adult. Jane soon finds herself juggling life both as a regular high school student and as an assistant to a high powered executive in the cutthroat world of fashion... It’s McAdams’s Broadway debut, and though she started the play, in my viewing, a bit jittery and unnaturally rhythmic, she soon settled into her role as the linchpin in this young’s boy curtailed life with magnetic ease.
As a single mom caring for a special needs child, the weight of Mary Jane’s existence and her adoration and love for her son are the anchors fortifying this narrative. By the time the final curtain on “Mary Jane” drops, the audience is fully immersed in the titular character’s experiences. McAdams masters her portrayal of a determined caregiver continually sitting in the uncertainty of worry, despite constantly leaning toward positivity. Here you will find an overview of the cast & crew of Jane by Design season 1, including all the actors, actresses and the director. When you click on a person, you can watch more movies and/or series by him or her. Amy Herzog’s beautiful play “Mary Jane” is, at its core, a study of the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to fight and care for her child.
Mary Jane (Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams) sits in the small kitchen of her one-bedroom apartment, speaking to her super, Ruthie (Brenda Wehle). While Ruthie plunges desperately into the clogged sink, Mary Jane chats aimlessly. As she drones on with an eerie cheeriness, desperate to fill in the dead air, it’s immediately apparent this is a rare opportunity for her to socialize. Though Ruthie initially attempts to indulge Mary Jane, pity takes over, and the older woman instead begins to advise her tenant on the wonders of good sleep hygiene and self-care. Even armed with her cloak of optimism, it’s apparent to everyone except Mary Jane that her emotional well-being is teetering on the edge. The series was canceled after one season while plans were in the works for a second season.
Now Billy dates the new girl, Zoe, which makes Jane feel like he's replacing her. Jane's father died and her mother ran out on Jane and Ben before the series started. Jane's mother has returned home to Jane and Ben, and she stays awhile. Her brother Ben (David Clayton Rogers) tries to make money by getting jobs, but the jobs never work out until he lands one as the athletic assistant at Jane's school. At Donovan Decker, Jane discovers a world full of fashion challenges working for Gray Chandler Murray (Andie MacDowell) and tackles them with the help of her co-workers, Jeremy Jones (Rowley Dennis), India Jourdain (India de Beaufort), Carter (Ser'Darius Blain) and Birdie (Brooke Lyons).
Season 1 of Jane by Design premiered on January 3, 2012. The following is a table with the average estimated number of viewers per episode of Jane by Design on ABC Family.
The play, to be clear, is not about the kid (who we never fully see), but about his mom and her experience caring first for her child at home and then in the hospital. The writer draws from her own experience with a sick child and as you watch this journey you constantly think to yourself that Herzog must have had that very conversation. They’re all too visceral to have been made from whole cloth.
Jane tries to be the best at her job and her school, juggling the everyday challenges of high school and the world of fashion. Healthcare is a vast ecosystem of treatment, suffering and healing, of hospitals, bills and logistics. It’s often, rightly in the US, denigrated for its opacity, inequities and Kafka-esque absurdities.
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