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Tatiana Maslany is no stranger to playing multiple roles. On the ultra-addictive cult hit drama Orphan Black she's portrayed more than ten clones of the same woman—each an utterly distinct and compelling character. So it must be a relief that in her off-Broadway debut, she’ll only have two parts to tackle.
In Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe, Maslany is one of six actresses playing the title character at different points in her life (she plays Mary at ages 27 and 36). Mary is exploring an existential question: Are we each many people over the course of our lives, or just one? At face value, Mary may live an ordinary life as an accountant—but as written by the skilled Letts (who won a Pulitzer for August: Osage County), she would seem to be one of the more refreshingly multifaceted female characters to grace the stage recently, portrayed in moments as both hopeful and downtrodden, as a mother, a lover, a friend, and much more.
When the play premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater in 2016, it was praised as a lovely and haunting portrait of a woman in full. Now, it comes to New York in a major off-Broadway production at Second Stage Theater with Lila Neugebauer, one of the theater’s most promising young directors, at the helm. Through Aug. 12; Kiser Theater, 305 W. 43rd St.
