I like Colm Toibin’s play The Testament of Mary,which has a contemporary Mary reminiscing about the death of her son, Jesus, two thousand years ago. But the evening starts by assaulting us with a disorientating, irritating soundscape that drones on for fifteen minutes as we walk up onto the stage and look at props, a live bird, and the actress Fiona Shaw in a glass booth preparing. As directed by Deborah Warner, Ms Shaw gives us a very strong, active, but quite masculine performance of a woman I had thought of as warm, feminine, maternal.
Early on, when Mary’s mostly emotionally sound, Shaw’s phrasing is off-putting as she speaks in short clips of two or three words at a time. I’d like to see another actress do the part using the same words in complete sentences. The performance grows, and becomes full of sturm und drang, which pushes us away, where a simple statement about the frightful events would have pulled us in. On the crown of thorns depiction, she sings it. The facts, ma’am, would give us more empathy than the scenery chewing we are subjected to as blood runs down Jesus’s arms. Then there is a monotonal recitation of the body on the cross. Then she strips and plunges into water — all just a self-indulgent performance. I hope all this doesn’t fool people into thinking they’ve seen good acting.
