Book review of The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin. 2012. Scriber. New York. Theatrical debut of Toibin’s adaptation of the book opens on Broadway this Spring. Previews begin at the Walter Kerr Theater on March 26, opening April 22. Featuring Irish actress Fiona Shaw as the Virgin Mary.
Whether you are a Christian, a student of archetypal psychology, or a person who is simply curious about un-masking the myth of perfection, Colm Toibin’s compelling novella is for you. I doubt it is fare for fundamentalists, who would be horrified that this Mary doesn’t believe her son’s claims of divinity, but this seems a tragic irony. The very people who want to be closest to the Virgin Mary, would reject Toibin’s beautiful characterization as “heresy”.
Their loss. Surely, if these folks could hold their breaths, and delve into Toibin’s prose, they would feel their hearts open to the struggles of this older woman looking back on a hard life, alienated from her community, following the years when she lost her son on the cross.
Toibin enters the mind of a mother, and, like any human mom, she has known her son from birth, was skeptical of his self-made ministry, seeing clearly how influenced he was by those who needed him to be the God he is not.
If this has the flavor of the 1960’s Paul Newman film, Cool Hand Luke, the parallel is accurate. In that gritty tale, the inmates of a Southern chain gang came to idolize Luke, a rebel and a loner, projecting into him a hero status they could not aspire to on their own. In much the same way, Toibin’s Mary sees the apostles maneuvering the young Christ, inflating his ego, spreading tales of his miracles.
And yet, Toibin weaves a complex tale. As the stories of the miracles are told in flashback, Mary has no clear explanation for some of them. In the wedding scene she sees a vat of water which become wine – but was this slight of hand? She sees the “resurrected” Lazarus, but was he truly buried in the first place? She does what most mothers would do: love her son, tell him home truths, feel despair when he doesn’t listen to her, and struggle to survive his tragic choices she cannot prevent.
The Testament of Mary awakens a new version of the archetype mother goddess, and, for Christians, invites empathy for a woman who did not allow herself to be the victim. Toibin’s Mary sees the world and human nature with a discerning mind. She can have doubts, feel remorse, be cranky about getting old, question authority, and long for the babe she once held in her arms. There is great freedom in realizing you don’t have to be perfect, that your job is to be real and whole and flawed and alive on this earth, as she was.