![]() After a 2011 Irish production, the play ran briefly on Broadway in 2013, closing after only two weeks of a scheduled 12-week run, but it was nominated for three Tony Awards, including Best Play. The play is a solo performance depicting 'the mother of Jesus tells her story of her son’s Crucifixion' and questions his death and divinity. 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. The Testament of Mary is a play written by Colm Tibn, based on his 2012 novella of the same name and 2011 play Testament. 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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