With the World Premiere of Mother Play, Jessica Lange Is Thrilled to Do Something New

Over the course of her Broadway career, the actress Jessica Lange—displaying what seems like the single-minded methodicalness of an assassin—checked off the classics of the American stage, one after the other. After her Broadway debut in 1992, playing Blanche DuBois opposite Alec Baldwin's Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, she played Amanda in The Glass Menagerie in 2005 and Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night in 2016. Lange won a Tony Award for the latter. "Lange is entirely free onstage," the New Yorker said of that performance.

Making her return to the stage after a seven-year absence, she’s excited to try something new: the world premiere of a newly written play. “That, coupled with what a great play I think it is, was what attracted me to doing it,” Lange told Tamsan Fadal for The Broadway Show on a break during the final week of rehearsals. “Creating something nobody's seen before, there'll be no way to compare it to anything. So that in itself, it's exciting.”

Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel, Mother Play covers four decades' worth of history, including five evictions, in the lives of a single family. Lange plays the hardened matriarch with Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons playing the children. Asked what she finds relatable about her character, she said, “There's probably more that I don't resonate with. This particular character, Phyllis Herman, makes decisions that are almost incomprehensible. I hate to say that because it's not in my experience at all.”

If the familial relationships onstage leave something to be desired, the bond between the actors is real. “I'm thrilled to be working with Celia and Jim,” said Lange. “I love them both.”

Watch the full interview from The Broadway Show below.