Meet the actress at the center of the Goodman Theatre's 'Mary'
Myra Lucretia Taylor plays Mary in the Goodman production of the same name. "Mary" closes March 6 in the Goodman's Owen Theatre.
When Myra Lucretia Taylor's agent sent over the script to a new play called “Mary” at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, he offered some advice to his client: “Have a drink before you read it,” he said. Smart guy.
If you've seen “Mary” at the Goodman Theatre, or read the coverage of playwright Thomas Bradshaw's controversial play, you'll know that Mary is a slave who lives with a white family in Maryland in the 1980s. Neither Mary nor the family for whom she cooks and does chores (and who stick a racial epithet in front of her name when they speak of her) sees anything wrong in this horrendously archaic situation.
And in the final scene, Mary (who belatedly receives an education) delivers a blisteringly homophobic monologue that seems designed to destroy any sympathy that the audience may have developed for the character. All in all, this is the kind of role that many African-American actors, even actors who are perfectly willing to take great risks, just would not care to play. You might say, as a Goodman Theatre spokesman allowed, that the role was “challenging to cast.”
Taylor did not partake of that suggested vino, nor did she throw the pages down in horror. “I was intrigued,” she said, over lunch last week. “I thought, this is going to be controversial and I want to be part of that discussion. But I did think it might be a bit tricky. Especially in that final monologue, I thought people might become angry at the actress.”
Tricky was putting it mildly.
A few audience members have left the show before the end of the 90-minute performance. (“Mary” closes Sunday after a less-than-spectacular box office performance but with some fervent defenders.) Comments have been shouted in the theater, especially during that final monologue when people's jaws tend to hit the floor. And the talkbacks have been filled with impassioned debate from audience members of all stripes.
“I realized early on,” Taylor said, “that I had better come down and talk.”
Taylor has a varied and formidable resume. She starred in “Nine” on Broadway, spent time playing Madame Morrible in “Wicked” and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for a season. Her dance card is typically full. So why, then, did she come to Chicago to take what seems to be such a thankless role?
“I know who I am,” she said, grinning.
You can see that in her work. I had problems with the artifice of many aspects of “Mary,” but Taylor delivers one of the best performances of the year so far in Chicago: stoic, truthful, humble, powerful, beleaguered, uncompromising. Regardless of what is going on around her at any given moment.
“We're really at a point in America,” Taylor said, by way of further explanation, “where people want to harm people who do not share their opinions. We must defend the rights of people to have opinions other than our own. And this play has really made me engage with that idea.”
Like all leading actors, Taylor has made sense of her character. Mary, she argues, sees nothing unusual in her situation. “Many of us put up with situations that seem strange,” she said, “where large or small injustices are wrought upon us. Had she left the family, no one would have come to hunt her down. All of these characters are complicit in her situation.”
Her Mary, she argues, only becomes homophobic after watching the partner of the young white boy she has raised become ill and die, affecting her greatly. The people who are appalled by either the play or her character, she says, are just failing to spend time in her shoes.
“Mary has come to believe homosexuality is a sin,” Taylor said. “Her education has given her agency. And she is entitled to her opinion. She came that way because she witnessed a death and that was a profound and harrowing experience.”
Taylor says she's grateful to the Goodman for having the guts to produce such a play. It took even more guts to play the woman at the heart of the storm.
Comments