Mary Jane could appear deceptively simple.

On the surface, Amy Herzog’s play is a slice-of-life about a mother (Rachel McAdams) trying to persevere through a parent’s worst nightmare. But the subtler details in how it’s told — both on paper, and in Anne Kauffman’s Broadway production currently at the Manhattan Theatre Club — layer the artistry to deepen the apparent simplicity.

Take the title, for instance. On a more superficial level, Mary Jane labels the story as being a mere window into who the title character is as a person. . . but considering the different resonances of the titular phrase brings in other associations. First, her Jane-tattoo mentioned in dialogue. And then, there’s the whole saintly aspect to her character. For example, here’s the biblical definition of Mary Jane: 

Drop of the sea; Beloved; Bitter; God is gracious. Mary Jane is a mash-up of two popular girls names that are Hebrew and English in origin, respectively. Mary has multiple meanings in Hebrew, including “drop of the sea,” “bitter,” and “beloved.” Jane, which means “beloved of God,” evokes a similar sentiment.

And the drug connotations of “Mary Jane” intersect with the play’s references to the relationship between saintly “ecstatic trips” and “excruciating-trial-by-God” saintliness.

And that’s only the title! 

Regarding Lael Jellinek’s set: why does the first set have such a low roof, with curtains blocking what’s above? Once this set is moved out of the way, why does it linger in plain sight over the hospital set? And why can we no longer see this first set during the final scene, when the hospital’s air space becomes vast emptiness? 

And then there’s the trifurcated staging. Across every scene, stage left is defined as the child’s space, stage right is defined as more distant from his illness, and center stage meets the two in the middle; note how the blocking seems to keep this in mind when staging where characters are placed, in relationship to what’s happening in that moment.

Taken together, these elements counter the argument that Mary Jane is a straightforward slice-of-life. And from a thematic angle, these elements also double as ambiguous traces of an authorial presence. . . in a play that probes whether there’s an order guiding our sometimes miserable existence.