Review: Will Death Never Come in ‘Peace for Mary Frances’?

"But they do it so bizarrely and relentlessly throughout the overlong play — overlong, that is, for its content — that you wonder what Ms. Thorne wants to show us." Exactly! I enjoyed the antics and acting, but wondered what the author meant us to take away - why was I watching this instead of an episode (or 4 episodes as it were) of the latest sitcom?

Having seen a remarkable number of plays about families over the past few decades, we, as playwrights, find it amazing to come upon a new one that doesn't remind us of any of the others. PEACE FOR MARY FRANCES by Lily Thorne (produced by The New Group) is a shockingly frank, outrageously engrossing drama about people who love and need each other perhaps too passionately, know each other perhaps too well, and can't help being inexorably drawn to whatever weapons may be available for damaging, wounding, or maiming each other. It's subtle and painful and written with shrewd skill. So, a new writer appears who has created a marvelous collection of fascinating and totally unexpected, living characters, who uses no clichés, and whose writing is fresh and delicious, and to our astonishment we find that some of our professional theatre critics seem merely annoyed. Sympathetic as we are to the fact that nightly immersion in watching plays can engender a process of desensitization in even the brightest individuals, causing them occasionally to become immune to the magnificent perfumes being emitted by rare flowers, we are compelled to point out that mistakes are sometimes made, and as PEACE FOR MARY FRANCES, superbly directed and brilliantly performed, seems to us to be among the best experiences one could have had in the New York theatre in recent years, we hope that audiences will still somehow find their way to it. Wallace Shawn and Kenneth Lonergan

I found the play a very insightful portrait of a strong, albeit domineering, highly competent matriach in her final days whose children cannot function very well without her and who depend upon her to straighten out their lives even when she is terminally ill. The only real peace for Mary Frances is death. Lois Smith, as always, is marvelous and has a very poignant, touching soliloquy that is well worth waiting for and will deeply touch your heart. The rest of the fine cast make this play quite believable as Mary Frances tries to get her family and her private affairs in order so she can finally leave this world in peace.

As much respect as I have for Jesse Green (considerable), I could not disagree with this notice more. I think this is a brave, uncompromising script that does not hew to conventional expectations of how a play's plot should unfold. Once I keyed into that, and slowed down my metabolism a little, I found it hypnotic and complex. The subject is how the shadow of death affects everyone--the person dying and the people attending her--and the story unfolds with much sympathy and no sentimentality. It's also about how much of the hard, necessary work in these family landmarks ends up being done by the women. It is very much a play by and about women, and, as pme who has been through some similar stuff, having access to this perspective made me understand my own life better. The performances are all strong, but the focus is on the characters played by Lois Smith, J. Smith Cameron and Johanna Day; they are as compelling as the remarkable trio in THREE TALL WOMEN. By the way, contrary to comments in the review and in others' posts, the behavior is not remotely all rotten and nasty. There are also moments of enormous tenderness. And even the smallest role, that of a nurse, has a gem of a scene. I'm a playwright and I teach playwriting, and I'm not known as a pushover. I think this is very strong work and I hope that Lily Thorne will continue despite the discouraging TIMES review. I'll be happy to see whatever she does next.

Sadly, the review's accusation of "tedium" is accurate. The production is a waste of talent; the glorious Lois Smith, especially, deserves better. The script needed to be cut by at least one-third, and the director did the fledgling playwright no favors by not insisting on that. How a playwriting student got this play this far, all the way to off-Broadway ... it's a mystery. I read in her bio that she is a former film documentarian, but it's still a mystery. The night I saw it in previews, the back row was filled with the director and production people madly making notes. But it sounds like nothing much changed between previews and opening night.

Saw this last week on an evening of heavy rain. Unfortunately, Lois Smith could not hold my interest beyond the first act. Death is the one thing we all have in common, and perhaps may experience some of the same family members in this play. But the non-stop nasty, rotten ways of these characters left nothing to look forward to in act two.