Rachel McAdams and Lily Santiago in Mary Jane.
Photo: Matthew Murphy
When Mary Jane takes her son to the hospital, it’s as if she descends through the ground into another world. Lael Jellinek’s set accomplishes this effect by moving upward: As an alarm sensor goes off, indicating that her chronically ill son is experiencing a seizure, the walls of Mary Jane’s modest Queens one-bedroom rise halfway into the rafters, though they don’t disappear from view. Her furniture and appliances — a foldout sofa, the kitchenette, a fridge speckled with magnets and reminder notes — hang over the antiseptic white and gray of the pediatric intensive-care unit. It’s like an insect molting an exoskeleton, one aspect of life sloughing…
