A Mother's Testament

On the Saturday before Easter, Lisa and I found ourselves in one of our favorite places in the world—New York City—with a free evening.  After a little online fishing, we landed two tickets to the Broadway production of The Testament of Mary.  Based on Colm Toibin’s novella of the same name, the one-woman play stars Fiona Shaw and is directed by Deborah Warner. 

Years ago, Lisa and I were fortunate enough to see Shaw in a production of Euripides’ Medea that was directed by Warner.  It was, without question, one of the most powerful, memorable, and unsettling pieces of theater we’ve ever witnessed.  So we were excited at the prospect of seeing the fruits of their latest project together.

We anticipated that The Testament of Mary might shock us and shake us a bit, and we were not disappointed.  Some of the credit here goes to the subject matter of the work.  In the monologue, Mary describes the events that led—with a horrible inevitability—to the crucifixion of Jesus; the unspeakable suffering she witnessed; the confusion and anger she experienced over the things His followers seemed to expect of her.  But most of the credit for the emotional power of the play goes to Shaw.  Her capacity to manifest raw pain and injured rage is, in my amateur judgment at least, unparalleled on the stage.

As with Medea, I would not recommend The Testament of Mary to everyone.  I know many people who would find it too abrasive, too detached from traditional and scriptural portrayals of the mother of Jesus, and too disquieting in its implications.  I myself have reservations about some parts of the play.  But I left the theater with two overarching impressions that I am confident will linger with me and will continue to inform my faith for a very, very long time.

The first impression relates to the loneliness of Jesus.  Certainly, He was often surrounded by crowds and disciples (Mary calls them “misfits” in the play).  But Mary’s description of her son clearly, if for the most part implicitly, offers up an image of a man who kept his own counsel, who moved with his own sense of time, and who was always at the center of things—and yet somehow apart from them.  It is commonplace for us to envision Jesus alone at the time of his temptations or in the Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross.  But I do not think that, until I saw Jesus through the eyes of His mother, I fully appreciated how much of His life must have been haunted by the unique loneliness that could only have belonged to Him.

The second impression relates to His suffering on the cross.  Over the years, I have attended countless Good Friday services that have attempted in one way or another to convey the horrible torture that the practice of crucifixion involved.  I think this is theologically legitimate.  After all, our talk of Jesus dying for us loses some of its force if we forget what this entailed for him as a human being.  But legitimate questions can also be raised as to the point at which graphic depictions of the crucifixion begin to distract us from our understanding of this sacrifice as an act of love and redemption.  I took a pass on Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ for these sorts of reasons.

The Testament of Mary persuaded me that this was the right call.  If you want to try to get your head around the sacrifice that the crucifixion entailed, you do not need to see gory images of nails piercing flesh.  You simply need to hear the act described by the mother of the man being tortured.  On a March night in New York City, I feel like I heard that voice, and I will never forget it. 

For that, I am profoundly grateful.

And I am not just a little changed.