The Testament of Mary

We all love a back-story, the real one behind the myth, and surely no character is more encoded, more encrusted with ritual, than the one about the Mother of God!  Famed Irish writer Colm Tóibín has Mary literally stepping down from her plinth, discarding her sacred props and stripping down to a T-shirt.

This is Mary’s last testament from Ephesus after two decades as a political refugee and already a pawn of mythmakers.  In short scenes broken by deep blackouts, Alison Whyte speaks directly to us from the roped-off, black and marble steps of Elizabeth Gadsby’s set.

Adoring her son but discarded from his adult life, she travels to Cana to warn Jesus of danger.  She has no time for his now fine robes, his dysfunctional disciples and his highfalutin’ words.  

Toibin’s easy prose totally engages as Mary tells the story of Lazarus and witnesses, but is unconverted by, the marriage trick of water to wine.   

Whyte excellently paces her emotional heat rising to the final agony of the Crucifixion.  Later on the run with Mary Magdalene they shared a dream of afterlife, but Mary can’t abide the false proselytizing of the men about the Resurrection or, she sniggers, the Virgin Birth!

Unable to believe these two miracles of faith was what drove my grandfather from a career in the priesthood to one ultimately as a secular, leftist historian.  Similarly, Mary’s testament is firmly in the real world, the perspective of a mother and a woman made cynical.  

Whyte is forthright and convincing in that humanity while also hinting at an icon in the making. Indeed, Toibin’s play left me wanting more of her insight and character, more “goss” if you like, more flesh on the bones of his very plausible counter-fiction.

Max Lyandvert provides fine musical punctuation.  But Imara Savage, in her first production as the STC’s new resident director, keeps Mary’s command of the stage overly still.   

Martin Portus

Photographer: Lisa Tomasetti