Mary Page Marlowe at the Old Vic: 'Susan Sarandon makes impactful London stage debut'

Hugh Quarshie (Andy), Susan Sarandon (Mary Page Marlowe) in Mary Page Marlowe at The Old Vic (2025) - (Manuel Harlan)

Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon makes a scanty but impactful and democratic London stage debut here. She’s the eldest of five actresses (plus one doll) playing a woman glimpsed at different stages of life in Tracy Letts’s well-crafted, prismatic play. Her three scenes take up around 15 minutes of the show’s 100-minute exploration of the titular, more-or-less Catholic Ohio accountant, and they have a warm, elegiac understatement.

It’s an undeniable thrill to see the star of Rocky Horror, Thelma and Louise and Dead Man Walking in the flesh and close up – Matthew Warchus’s in-the-round production puts her almost in touching distance of the first three rows. But Sarandon deftly serves the play and the ensemble rather than dominating the event.