There are various studies of first-century Palestine that give insight into the kind of life that Mary likely would have lived in small-town Galilee. But how plausible is this portrayal, from a historical, textual and theological perspective? The historical context for Mary’s Life
As the blurb on the Malthouse Theatre website puts it (the play will run there in November): “This Mary is unrecognisable from the meek, obedient woman of scripture, painting and sculpture”. The play and the book it is based on have been much acclaimed for bravely challenging traditional beliefs about Mary. Ultimately, she rejects her Jewish faith and the idea that Jesus was the Son of God. She struggles with the trauma of losing her son to what she sees as religious fanaticism. Though looked after by these disciples, Tóibín’s Mary distrusts them and resists their efforts to twist her story to suit their agendas.
Tóibín claims that Mary’s “real” story was repressed by the early disciples of Jesus. He undertakes an interesting literary experiment – though underlying this, his novella is littered with historical and theological claims that draw heavily on Christian literature. Toibin’s is a moving portrait of a woman grieving her son’s death, with a distinctly modern feel. The play has toured globally and is now having its Australian premiere at the Sydney Theatre Company with Alison Whyte in the role of Mary. At the wedding at Cana, she sees Lazarus for herself and finds that "he was in possession of a knowledge that seemed to me to have unnerved him he had tasted something or seen or heard something which had filled him with the purest pain." This beautiful novella turns on who or what Mary should believe about her son's life and death and on a mother's grief: "I saw that once again he was trying to remove the thorns that were cutting into his forehead and the back of his head and, failing to do anything to help himself, he lifted his head for a moment and his eyes caught mine.Colm Tóibín’s play and Booker-nominated novella The Testament of Mary aims to “demythologise” the story of Mary (the mother of Jesus). the sense that there was something missing in each one of them." But when she recounts the story of Lazarus's return from the grave, she presents no other explanation than that of his sisters, that Jesus was the one who brought him back. Mary doesn't think her son is the son of God in fact, she's convinced that he's simply running with the wrong crowd, "Something about the earnestness of those young men repelled me. T ib n (Brooklyn) has chosen Jesus' mother as the narrator of his poignant reimagining of the last days of Christ. Tóibín’s tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed. This woman whom we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the cross until her son died-she fled, to save herself), and her judgment of others is equally harsh.
She does not agree that her son is the Son of God nor that his death was “worth it” nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,” were holy disciples. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel, who are her keepers. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son’s crucifixion. “Tóibín is at his lyrical best in this beautiful and daring work” ( The New York Times Book Review) that portrays Mary as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity-shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.
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