The Testament of Mary allowed me to witness an entirely different Mary-a human Mary, a woman who has lost a child. Michelangelo’s Mary holds none of the raging grief of Tóibín’s mother, anger at not being able to protect or save her son. I understand this mother she cares nothing for him being a savior or offering mankind eternal life. Is Michelangelo saying we should have compassion for this mother? She pays homage to what she and her son have sacrificed for us. With mallet and chisel Michelangelo created a mild Mary, one who meekly and obediently sacrifices her son for Christianity-so that we each may live. I marveled at how this contemplative form arose from a single block of marble. Mary holds Jesus in her lap, reminding us that he is still her child, her baby.
Peter’s Basilica in Rome and was enthralled with Michelangelo’s Pieta-the calm beauty of a mother cradling her adult son. Reading Tóibín’s poetic words, I was cast back years earlier, before my daughter’s death, when I visited St. Trying not to disturb nearby theatergoers, fearful if I let go I’d loudly wail and make a scene of my own, I put my face into my husband’s shirt sleeve and wept.Īfter the play, despite the pummeling of grief, I picked up Tóibín’s novella, both drawn and apprehensive to once again hear the voice of a mother yearning for her dead child. And like any loving mother, with a child taking reckless chances with his life, she begs him to stop these “miracles.” She could care less about him turning water into wine, she just wants her son back-alive. She never utters his name, Jesus she refers to him only as “my son.” She thunders at having to sit quietly and watch him act in ways that she knew would lead to his death. Mary is grieving the death not of a savior but of her own flesh-and-blood son. Sitting in my red velvet seat, center mid-orchestra of the Walter Kerr Theater, I watched a mother, twenty years after her son’s death, raging at what she has lost. It never occurred to me that I was going to watch the earthly story, simply a play about a mother who loses her child. Raised Catholic, I was well-schooled in the narrative of Jesus and Mary, a sweeping one, and if imagined at all, it ran more like a Charlton Heston film. While I hadn’t yet read Tóibín’s work, I didn’t want to miss seeing the brilliant actor, Fiona Shaw, alone on the stage. A year after my eighteen-year-old daughter died, my husband and I went to see the literary adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s, The Testament of Mary.
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