'I'm still a person outside of this room, you know. I still live life even when you're not watching me.'

Mary Page Marlowe is an accountant from Ohio. She's led an ordinary life, filled with pain, pleasure and drudgery, just like anybody else. But inside her seemingly unremarkable story is a nuanced portrait of the majesty of a modest existence.

A vivid, time-jumping mosaic of one woman's world, Tracy Letts' play Mary Page Marlowe presents a life out of order, coloured by emotion and full of contradictions.

It was first performed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, in 2016, and received its UK premiere at The Old Vic, London, in 2025, directed by Matthew Warchus and starring Andrea Riseborough and Susan Sarandon.

About the Author

Tracy Letts is an American playwright, screenwriter and actor. His plays include Linda Vista, Bug, Killer Joe and August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Tony and Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play.

Reviews

'Exquisite... Beautiful and affecting, like flipping through a friend's photo album in no particular order, finding some faces familiar, others unexpected... A haunting, elliptical drama about the evolutions, reversals and resurrections in a woman's life... It illuminates, movingly, how youthful ideals wither, how little of life can truly be foreseen, how provisional all our plans are in a world where choice and chance are always in tension'

* New York Times *

'Tracy Letts is a poet of the ordinary, a playwright who writes about commonplace lives in uncommon ways.... You'll be enthralled to watch Mary's life unfold, for it is described in a manner so clear and true that you cannot doubt its significance. Mary Page Marlowe is the most purely beautiful play that Mr. Letts has given us'

* Wall Street Journal *

'This is Letts in contemplative mode, theatrically plumbing large questions like 'what is a person?' and, therefore, 'what is a life?'... Intensely thoughtful... the work has depth and an elegant potency... Mary Page Marlowe evokes a complex response that is both heady and emotional'

* Variety *

'Probing yet unsentimental in its clear-eyed compassion, this is a fragmented portrait of an ordinary life, distinguished by writing that plumbs emotional depths without ever surrendering its exquisite restraint'

* Hollywood Reporter *



Book Information
ISBN 9781839045165
Author Tracy Letts
Format Paperback
Page Count 72
Imprint Nick Hern Books
Publisher Nick Hern Books
Weight(grams) 89g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 5mm