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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