The Story of Mary MacLane by Herself – Griffin Theatre Co and Ride On Theatre

Overview

The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane was first published in 1902 and was popularly received, selling 100,000 copies in the first month and launching the 19-year-old writer into the fame she so desired. Bojana Novakovic has adapted MacLane's writings into the play The Story of Mary MacLane by Herself, which arrives at Griffin Theatre via Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre under Tanya Goldberg's direction. Novakovic plays Mary as well as herself and is joined on stage by musicians Tim Rogers (who composed the music), Andrew Baylor and Mark Harris.

We are introduced to this "wild woman of Butte" as a 19-year-old searching for "fame — ahem, happiness" and follow her to New York, where she encounters varying success both with publications and sexual partners. We leave her in her final hour after a shattering rejection by the Devil — a "fatter and shorter" gentleman caller than she'd expected. The story is presented as a farrago of song, dialogue and confessionals from both MacLane's and Novakovic's personal lives.

The theatrical device of MacLane performing in a hammy vaudeville show somewhat against her will is amusing and allows for some humorous interludes; however, it confines the piece to a faux amateurism befitting of Rogers' rock-star acting but not of Novakovic's polished performance. Because of this, the piece never escapes its own subject; it cannot transcend the narcissism of MacLane and Novakovic to comment of the problem of selfhood in a narcissistic society. It seeks our attention more than it hands over insight.

The production has humour and charm, the best song written about a potato this decade and is a welcome introduction to a fascinating yet popularly neglected writer, but MacLane's self-professed genius and the philosophy of her "own good peripatetic school" seem to have wandered off somewhere along the way.