Mary Seacole lived a remarkable, barrier-shattering life inherently dramatic enough to be ripe for stage treatment. Born in 1805 Jamaica under British colonial rule, she eventually travelled the world throughout the 19th century, a single black woman applying her abilities as a nurse/doctor/healer as she went. She also opened several hotels, wrote an autobiography and counted English royals among her patrons before she died in 1881.
With “Marys Seacole,” playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury (who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2029 for her comedy “Fairview”) attempts to capture the radical, epic life of a woman who spent the bulk of her years tending to the medical needs of people in crisis, whether on the front lines of the Crimean War or the epicenter of a South American cholera outbreak. As the title indicates, we see multiple Marys in Griffin Theatre’s 90-minute production, directed at rapid-fire pace by Jerrell L. Henderson and Hannah Todd.
