Just to make certain no one misses the point, Marys Seacole sound designer Palmer Hefferan broadcasts Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” a few times. His use of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O,” often dubbed “The Banana Boat Song” is more obscure, although banana boats might be a hint to the play’s international interests.
To explain, the woman standing in for EveryEve in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s provocative, yet confusing work, is Mary Seacole (1804-1881), a Jamaican healer, whose father was a Scottish soldier and who therefore attributes her combative and journeying spirit to him. This Mary wanted to devote herself to medical pursuits from childhood and traveled about doing so as a balm administering adult, even joining Florence Nightingale in the Crimea during the 1853-56 war. (The mere reference somehow feels relevant to today’s foreign policy problems.)
Notice—as if it could be missed—that the “Marys” in the title is in the plural, an indication that the inspiring Mary Seacole has passed her passions and devotions along to women throughout the ensuing decades and centuries. This is Drury’s intention, of course. She aims to suggest that every woman carries within her something of the original manufacturer, something of her healing impulses.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★ review here.]
The playwright—whose Fairview played to wide but not universal acclaim at Soho Rep not long ago—stresses her points by writing for an all-female cast. (The only men seen are dummies representing dead soldiers, not a promising prospect for men in the Drury world.)
It needs to be acknowledged that Drury’s calling attention to the determined Seacole is commendable, as is her admiration for the invaluable benefits of widespread medical care. There’s no underestimating the effect that nursing—perhaps forever symbolized by Florence Nightingale’s prominence—can have, no matter when it’s being practiced. (Though Drury doesn’t get around to saying so explicitly, it may be that nurses often know much more astutely than doctors what’s going on with patients.)
Actually, it’s Drury’s zeal that gets the better of her as her 90-minute play runs its anfractuous course. To get her Marys out and about, she starts by having the original Mary (Quincy Tyler Bernstine, often seen and always strong) step out on a raised platform in a stunning black-and-white period costume (Kaye Voyce designed the many, many costumes here) to introduce herself and to set out her lifelong convictions and undertakings.
Once Mary has had her initial say, she sheds the 19th-century look and, presto change-o, is in contemporary scrubs tending to an incapacitated woman being watched over in her hospital room by a worried daughter and an all-but-uninterested granddaughter. Almost immediately, this Mary and assistant nurse are deep in graphic duties.
(Gabby Beans, Lucy Taylor, Marceline Hugot, and Ismenia Mendes play many roles throughout and in the program are identified by names beginning with the letter “m”—for, you could say, obvious reasons.)
From then on, Marys Seacole dodges back and forth across time and locales just as fast as the cast members can change clothes. Whereupon these myriad Marys and other women with names presumably beginning with “m” become involved in anywhere globally that nurses and the nursed are present.
To some extent the pressure on them is such that eventually it rises to a sequence which isn’t so much dramatic as it is messy—with sound designer Hefferan and lighting designer Jiyoun Chang providing a tornado of effects. What’s happening is that Drury has too much she’s compelled to say. She loses control of sorting her ideas so that audience members can follow them. One thing that can be said is that she doesn’t shy away from showing more than one instance of what looks a good deal like hysteria, an emphasis that might not find satisfaction among all spectators.
It may be that the most significant Marys Seacole speech is delivered by a character called Duppy Mary (the always estimable Karen Kandel.) For the most part, walking slowly, silently, and spectrally across Mariana Sanchez’s adaptable, facility-clean, off-pink set, Duppy Mary is meant to be Mary’s distancing mother, both a positive and negative influence on her daughter. Late in the play and having observed her daughter’s compulsive travels, Duppy Mary reacts to the prospect of Mary embarking on a United States journey.
So much so that she finally speaks her mind in an anti-American tirade. It may well be that she’s expressing sentiments germane to her time, but what she has to say also pertains to today and can surely be taken for Drury’s recognizable and worthy beliefs about damaging current events. Suddenly, Marys Seacole is grounded in a persuasive and welcome timely reality.
Marys Seacole opened February 25, 2019, at the Claire Tow Theater and runs through April 7. Tickets and information: lct.org
