Rachel McAdams to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Mary Jane’

The movie star Rachel McAdams will make her Broadway debut subsequent spring in an acclaimed and heart-wrenching play a few mom caring for a small baby with a severe sickness.

McAdams will star in “Mary Jane,” a drama by Amy Herzog that debuted at Yale Repertory Theater in 2017 and was adopted by an Off Broadway run at New York Theater Workshop that very same yr. In The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green referred to as the play “a heartbreaker for anyone human” and “the most profound and harrowing of Ms. Herzog’s many fine plays.”

McAdams, who grew to become well-known taking part in Regina George within the 2004 film “Mean Girls,” carried out frequently onstage whereas rising up in Canada and studied theater at York University in Ontario. But she has not carried out onstage professionally since she was a pupil. In a phone interview, she stated her preliminary profession aspirations had been to carry out as a theater actor.

“I had dreams of going to the Stratford Festival in Canada, and hadn’t really entertained Broadway — that was so far off, and even now I’m pinching myself,” she stated. “I’ve been looking for a play forever, but kind of casually — not fully committed to it — and this came along, I read it, and I just was so taken with it.”

She stated she discovered the play “beautifully written” and “couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was already inside of me.”

“It’s shedding light on the difficulties, but also the resiliency, of families with children with special needs,” she added. “There’s actually a lot of comedy to the piece as well — she’s drawn an amazingly positive, resilient character in Mary Jane, and really well-drawn, supporting characters around her.”

McAdams was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2015 movie “Spotlight.” She additionally starred within the 2004 movie adaptation of “The Notebook”; a musical adaptation of that very same story is scheduled to open on Broadway in March.

McAdams stated her resolution to come back to Broadway was not associated to the twin strikes by screenwriters and actors which have largely idled Hollywood. She stated she had dedicated to “Mary Jane” earlier than the strikes started. And although apprehensive about returning to the stage, McAdams can also be wanting ahead to it.

“There’s no editor — you’re really so naked and vulnerable,” she stated. “I hope my training will support me, but it was such a long time ago.”

“I think it might be like riding a bike,” she added. However, she stated, “there’s a little bit of the unknown about it. And I think also just having emotional stamina — you really don’t know until you’re there if you’re going to be able to fill your vessel up enough to keep you going. So it’s just all those ‘I won’t know until I get there’ things, but I’m excited to do the work.”

The Off Broadway manufacturing received three Obie Awards, for Herzog’s playwriting, for route by Anne Kauffman, and for a lead efficiency by Carrie Coon. There have since been a number of productions at regional theaters; one is now operating in Santa Rosa, Calif.

The nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club will current the Broadway manufacturing, additionally directed by Kauffman, at its Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Previews are scheduled to start on April 2; a gap date and the names of the opposite solid members haven’t but been introduced.

Herzog, whose play “4000 Miles” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013, has just lately turned her consideration to revising basic works: She tailored Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” for a Broadway manufacturing starring Jessica Chastain and Arian Moayed that ran earlier this yr, and he or she is adapting Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” for a Broadway manufacturing planning to open subsequent spring with Jeremy Strong within the title position.