McAdams, Rachel

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    ‘Mary Jane’ Review: When Parenting Means Intensive Care

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    Amy Herzog’s heartbreaker arrives on Broadway with Rachel McAdams as the alarmingly upbeat mother of a fearfully sick child.Soon after Alex was born at 25 weeks, with multiple catastrophic disorders, Mary Jane’s husband, unable to cope, fled their marriage. Still, she hopes he “finds some peace, I really do.”She also thinks kindly of her boss, who means to accommodate her but pretty much fails to. “It’s daily moral agony for her,” Mary Jane marvels. “It’s really something to behold.”Mary Jane’s own moral agony is likewise something to behold. She feels guilty about putting the super of her Queens building, where she shares a junior one-bedroom with Alex, in a difficult position by removing the window guards. “It’s just that he loves looking out the windows, especially when he’s sick and I can’t take him outside?” she explains in upspeak.“It’s the law,” the not-unkind super replies — though Alex, now 2, can barely sit up, let alone reach the sill.“You’re an excellent superintendent,” Mary Jane says. She is the embodiment of apologizing for living.That, at its heart, is the condition that Amy Herzog’s steel-trap play “Mary Jane” explores: The death of the self in the love for one’s child. As with Alex, so for his mother: There is no cure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Rachel McAdams Is Not Afraid of the Dark

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      The actress makes her Broadway debut in “Mary Jane” as the single mother of a seriously ill child. She views her acting choices as expanding her orbit.From the outside, you wouldn’t know that Rachel McAdams, the thoughtfully charming star of blockbuster rom-coms, rom-drams, a Marvel franchise and the Oscar-winning “Spotlight,” has been wondering about death.Maybe it has to do with the therapist who said that her indecisiveness and deep curiosity about seeing through someone else’s eyes, which she’s harbored since childhood, could be chalked up to something called “death anxiety.”McAdams had long viewed her acting choices as expanding her orbit. “It’s been a way to live a lot of lives in one,” she said. If that was about a fear of dying — well, it didn’t rattle her.Instead, characteristically, she embraced it. “We don’t have a lot of great coping mechanisms for death in our culture,” she said. “So, yeah, I kind of welcome the opportunity to lean into that — earlier rather than later. Let’s get cozy with it. Let’s get cozy with that next adventure.”Death hovers like a specter around her latest role, as the single mother of a seriously ill child, in the play “Mary Jane.” McAdams hasn’t done theater since college; she makes her Broadway debut as the title character in this Manhattan Theater Club production, which began previews April 2 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. It’s by the busy playwright Amy Herzog, who also adapted Broadway’s show of the moment, Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.”“Mary Jane” is the first of her own deceptively spare plays to appear on Broadway, after a celebrated run in 2017 at New York Theater Workshop. Dotted (surprisingly) with laugh lines, it’s about the daily muck and lasting profundity of caregiving, a nitty-gritty subject that’s rarely dramatized. “A heartbreaker for anyone human,” Jesse Green wrote in his New York Times review.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Rachel McAdams to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Mary Jane’

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      The play, by Amy Herzog, is about a mother caring for a chronically ill child.The film star Rachel McAdams will make her Broadway debut next spring in an acclaimed and heart-wrenching play about a mother caring for a small child with a serious illness.McAdams will star in “Mary Jane,” a drama by Amy Herzog that debuted at Yale Repertory Theater in 2017 and was followed by an Off Broadway run at New York Theater Workshop that same year. In The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called the play “a heartbreaker for anyone human” and “the most profound and harrowing of Ms. Herzog’s many fine plays.”McAdams, who became famous playing Regina George in the 2004 movie “Mean Girls,” performed regularly onstage while growing up in Canada and studied theater at York University in Ontario. But she has not performed onstage professionally since she was a student. In a telephone interview, she said her initial career aspirations were to perform as a theater actor.“I had dreams of going to the Stratford Festival in Canada, and hadn’t really entertained Broadway — that was so far off, and even now I’m pinching myself,” she said. “I’ve been looking for a play forever, but kind of casually — not fully committed to it — and this came along, I read it, and I just was so taken with it.”She said she found the play “beautifully written” and “couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was already inside of me.”“It’s shedding light on the difficulties, but also the resiliency, of families with children with special needs,” she added. “There’s actually a lot of comedy to the piece as well — she’s drawn an amazingly positive, resilient character in Mary Jane, and really well-drawn, supporting characters around her.”McAdams was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2015 film “Spotlight.” She also starred in the 2004 film adaptation of “The Notebook”; a musical adaptation of that same story is scheduled to open on Broadway in March.McAdams said her decision to come to Broadway was not related to the dual strikes by screenwriters and actors that have largely idled Hollywood. She said she had committed to “Mary Jane” before the strikes began. And though apprehensive about returning to the stage, McAdams is also looking forward to it.“There’s no editor — you’re really so naked and vulnerable,” she said. “I hope my training will support me, but it was such a long time ago.”“I think it might be like riding a bike,” she added. However, she said, “there’s a little bit of the unknown about it. And I think also just having emotional stamina — you really don’t know until you’re there if you’re going to be able to fill your vessel up enough to keep you going. So it’s just all those ‘I won’t know until I get there’ things, but I’m excited to do the work.”The Off Broadway production won three Obie Awards, for Herzog’s playwriting, for direction by Anne Kauffman, and for a lead performance by Carrie Coon. There have since been several productions at regional theaters; one is now running in Santa Rosa, Calif.The nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club will present the Broadway production, also directed by Kauffman, at its Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Previews are scheduled to begin on April 2; an opening date and the names of the other cast members have not yet been announced.Herzog, whose play “4000 Miles” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013, has recently turned her attention to revising classic works: She adapted Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” for a Broadway production starring Jessica Chastain and Arian Moayed that ran earlier this year, and she is adapting Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” for a Broadway production planning to open next spring with Jeremy Strong in the title role. More

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      in Television

      What to Know Before Seeing ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’

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      Why do Wanda Maximoff and our title hero seem to be zombies, and what is the Darkhold? Here’s a rundown and a viewing guide to help.It was already challenging enough to keep up with the 27 films and half-dozen Disney+ TV shows in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But now, in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” out Friday, you also have to keep track of multiple versions of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), also known as the Scarlet Witch. And who knows who else — it is the multiverse, after all, so there are multiple versions of, well, everyone.The trailers for “Multiverse of Madness” have made it out to be a crossover event that’s maybe not “Avengers: Endgame”-level, but certainly close. Eagle-eyed fans will have spotted connections to “WandaVision,” “Loki” and even zombie versions of a few characters, apparently from Episode 5 of the lesser-known Disney+ animated series “What If … ?,” as well as the M.C.U. debut of Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, the founder of the X-Men.It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with more than three days’ worth of M.C.U. content, and there is, of course, the bare minimum option of watching the first “Doctor Strange” film and calling it a day. But those who didn’t watch “WandaVision” may be left going “Westview what?” after the new movie.Here’s a guide to the five films and series you might want to brush up on before heading to the theater.‘Doctor Strange’ (2016)Tilda Swinton and Cumberbatch in the first film.Walt Disney Studios Motion PicturesDr. Strange’s solo film debut provides a primer on how Cumberbatch’s cocky neurosurgeon, Stephen Strange, came to be a master of the mystic arts, the Sorcerer Supreme and the guardian of the Time Stone. It also introduces his tempestuous relationship with Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), who returns in a big way in the fourth episode of “What If… ?” and also appears in a “Multiverse of Madness” trailer in a wedding gown (apparently marrying a man who is definitely not Dr. Strange, as the latter looks on from a pew). Also making a trailer appearance is Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Strange’s onetime friend turned foe, as this film explains.‘Avengers: Infinity War’ (2018)Benedict Wong, left, Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. teamed up in “Avengers: Infinity War.”Marvel/DisneyIn Dr. Strange’s “Avengers” debut, he is kidnapped by Ebony Maw, who is after the Time Stone. Tony Stark and Peter Parker eventually rescue him, and it becomes evident how much more powerful he has become since “Doctor Strange,” as he holds his own against Thanos, the Eternal-Deviant warlord, despite possessing only a single Infinity Stone compared with Thanos’s four. Strange also breaks the rules and looks forward in time to see all the possible scenarios in which the Avengers win.The film plays an important role in establishing Wanda’s back story, as its events are the source of her grief in “WandaVision,” and continue to haunt her in “Multiverse of Madness.” In the earlier movie, Wanda was forced to kill Vision, with whom she was romantically involved, to prevent Thanos from stealing the Mind Stone from Vision’s head, only to watch Thanos reverse time, pluck it out and kill Vision again.‘WandaVision’ (2021)Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in the series.Marvel Studios/Disney+This retro-aesthetic Disney+ show is hardly peripheral; the nine-episode series, which pays homage to 1950s sitcoms like “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” supplies crucial plot details that set up the events of “Multiverse of Madness.” Wanda is essentially a co-lead of the new film, and this series illustrates how her grief over Vision’s death leads her to torment the small New Jersey town of Westview.When we last saw Wanda, in the finale’s post-credits scene, she’d just lost the versions of Vision and her twin sons she’d magically created, which led her to embrace her identity as the Scarlet Witch and begin exploring the Darkhold, a book of spells that could allow her to reunite with her now-nonexistent family.In “Multiverse of Madness,” a distraught Wanda is still struggling to process the original Vision’s death in “Avengers: Infinity War,” as well as her attempt to escape it in the fantasy she created in “WandaVision.” In one of the trailers, she is greeted by her sons in their Westview home, though Wanda’s voice-over identifies the apparently joyful reunion only as a recurring dream.‘What If … ?’ (2021)Strange variants in the animated “What If …?”Marvel Studios/Disney+This nine-episode animated anthology series, which tells the stories of alternate versions of M.C.U. heroes in multiple realities, debuted with little fanfare in August, but Episode 4 provides some important context for “Multiverse of Madness.” Titled “What If … Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?,” it introduces a variant of Dr. Strange, Strange Supreme, created after Strange lost his girlfriend, Christine, in a car crash and became consumed by dark magic. After she vanishes in his arms, the evil Dr. Strange rips apart reality and is left alone to nurse his broken heart.While it initially seemed, from his trailer appearance, as though the Strange Supreme variant would be a main antagonist of “Multiverse of Madness,” Cumberbatch said in a recent interview that the character was not, in fact, Strange Supreme but an even more menacing version: Sinister Strange.Still there are other “What If … ?” variants who seem to appear in “Multiverse of Madness,” including a live-action version of Captain Carter (voiced by Hayley Atwell in “What If … ?”), a Peggy Carter variant who received the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers and appeared in a trailer fighting a variant of the Scarlet Witch. Also returning: the terrifying Zombie Wanda and Zombie Dr. Strange from Episode 5 (“What If … Zombies?!”), which probably explains why “Multiverse of Madness” is being billed as the M.C.U.’s first horror film. Episodes 8 and 9 also show Ultron discovering multiple realities and seeking to conquer them.‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ (2021)Tom Holland as Peter Parker, opposite Cumberbatch in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”Matt Kennedy/Sony PicturesThe director of “Multiverse of Madness,” Sam Raimi, has said that the new film is a direct continuation of the last Marvel Studios blockbuster, “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” released in December. When we last saw Dr. Strange, he’d just caused everyone to forget the existence of Peter Parker to stop the multiverse from exploding. This was necessary because of a botched spell Dr. Strange had cast that was designed to make everyone forget Peter was Spider-Man, which only ended up pulling Spider-Men and villains from alternate M.C.U. universes into the same one. At the end of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the spell appears to have worked, but it remains to be seen if or how the consequences of Dr. Strange’s actions will play into “Multiverse of Madness.”Bonus: ‘Loki’ (2021)Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in the series. Marvel/Disney+Will we see the hopelessly bureaucratic Time Variance Authority, an organization that polices time travel to prevent branching timelines, show up to bust some time travelers in “Multiverse of Madness”? The stand-alone “Loki” series, which takes place in an alternate M.C.U. timeline, also explains the idea of variants from different timelines (among them: Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki and Alligator Loki). More