Four-time Emmy winner, two-time Golden Globe winner, three-time Academy Award and four-time Tony nominee Laura Linney returns to Broadway in a haunting new solo play adapted by Rona Munro from the bestselling novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. A sold-out sensation originally produced by the London Theatre Company at the Bridge Theatre in London, Ms. Linney was hailed as "luminous" by the The New York Times, "genuinely phenomenal" by Time Out, and the play was called "deeply affecting and heartbreaking" by The Observer.
Linney plays Lucy Barton, a woman who wakes after an operation to find - much to her surprise - her mother at the foot of her bed. They haven't seen each other in years. During their days-long visit, Lucy tries to understand her past, works to come to terms with her family, and begins to find herself as a writer. This spellbinding story is directed by five-time Olivier Award winner Richard Eyre "with a keen-eyed compassion." - The New York Times
We know, or strongly suspect, very early in the play that a happy mother-daughter ending isn't likely, at least not in any traditional dramatic way. What My Name is Lucy Barton does instead - in its writing, in Eyre's tender direction, in Linney's compassionate performance - is provide a setting in which the women can come to some understanding about their relationship and maybe themselves. Their successes and failures will haunt Lucy - and her audience - for a very long time.
Alone on stage for the 90-minute running time of the show, which opened Wednesday at Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Linney skillfully segues between the authorial voice of Lucy and the sharp Midwestern twang of her mother without ever veering into caricature. Bob Crowley's simple set design, supplemented by Luke Halls' video projections, helps set the scene for Linney's performance, which maintains a cunning sense of narrative progression even as she digresses far off the beaten path. (The adaptation is by Rona Munro.) Under Richard Eyre's nuanced direction, she maintains full command of the story even as it meanders from Lucy's hospital stay to flashbacks to her hardscrabble, TV-free Illinois upbringing to glimpses at a future success borne of sacrifice and loss.
2018 | London |
London Premiere Production London |
2020 | Broadway |
Manhattan Theatre Club Broadway Premiere Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2020 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Solo Performance | Laura Linney |
2020 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Solo Performance | Laura Linney |
2020 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Laura Linney |
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