Review: MARY PAGE MARLOWE at The Old Vic

Date: 29th September 2025

Stars: 3

Mary Page Marlowe is a strange watch. You see a whole life laid out in fragments – marriages crumbling, kids slipping away, mistakes that bruise everything around them – and yet somehow it all feels muted. Big, sad things happen, but the air in the room stays oddly calm, as if the play is more interested in the record of events than the emotion inside them.

What keeps you watching and invested are the actors. Susan Sarandon gives her Mary a stillness that’s magnetic; you sit there waiting for the smallest flicker of expression, and when it comes, it lands. Andrea Riseborough is taut and restless, full of sharp edges and nervous energy, and she feels closest to giving us a Mary who might suddenly crack open. The other Marys are good too, each one adding their own layer, so you get glimpses of a complicated woman even if you never quite feel you know her.

The staging in the round is also a clever touch because it makes you feel like you’re circling her life, catching pieces as they’re held up and then moved on. The design is clean and fluid, with lighting shifts that slip you from one decade to the next without fuss. It suits the structure – fractured, fleeting, always in motion.

And yet, for all the craft on display, Mary herself stays just out of reach. You admire the acting, the staging, the neatness of the structure, but you don’t leave with her voice echoing in your chest, so a life that should feel messy and raw comes across more like carefully folded pages.

Mary Page Marlowe plays at The Old Vic until 1st November and tickets are available here: https://www.oldvictheatre.com/stage/mary-page-marlowe/