The Testament of Mary
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Cititour.com Review
Mothers are consistently celebrated for their deep, abiding love towards their children -- and perhaps no more so than the Virgin Mary. But in Colm Toibin’s provocative and often searing monologue The Testament of Mary, now being brought to extraordinary life by the gifted actress Fiona Shaw at the Walter Kerr Theatre, Mary has quite a few things to tell us about her relationship with her son (whom she never mentions by name). And it turns out their relationship was a lot more complicated than we’ve previously led to believe.
This Mary is still alive (the Playbill tells us the setting is now) and confined to a rather large house by her unseen guardians, who apparently make her very nervous even when they’re not around. (That’s perhaps the best explanation for why director Deborah Warner keeps Shaw constantly moving around Tom Pye’s overstuffed set!) Given the chance to tell us her side of the story, Mary spits it out, from her early misgivings about her son’s behavior with his followers – whom she calls “misfits” -- to her agonizing recollection of her actions on the day of his untimely death.
Shaw, best known to many for her work in the “Harry Potter” films, is a natural-born raconteur, and her impassioned, vocally varied delivery of Toibin’s 90-minute script keeps us mostly riveted. Even a familiar Biblical tale like the death and resurrection of Lazarus is rendered with poignancy by Shaw.
Oddly enough, though, Warner – Shaw’s longtime collaborator – somehow doesn’t trust that her star or the script will keep us fully engaged. In addition to the constant motion, there’s even a nude bathtub scene, a live vulture, plus a weird pre-show bit in which the audience is invited onstage to gawk at Shaw. It’s the kind of “theatricality” that you might expect to see in a college production. Moreover, it ultimately detracts – and distracts – from the true theatricality that Shaw provides even when she’s sitting still.
In the end, we see this Mary, like any mother who outsurvived her child, as a woman who simply wishes she could reverse time and change the outcome. For the deeply religious, this may be blasphemy, but I think most audiences will simply relate to her humanity.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
testamentonbroadway.com
Cast
Fiona Shaw
Open/Close Dates
Opening 3/26/2013
Closing 5/5/2013
Box Office
212-239-6200
Theatre Info
Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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