Testament by COLM TOIBIN, Dir Carey Perloff ACT San Francisco

Originally staged at the Dublin Theater Festival in 20111- and retitled for Broadway in 2013 as "The Testament of Mary" -- Testament is "a lyrical and deeply human work".  I most liked "The Master"(based on Henry James'life), Mothers and Sons, Brooklyn, and his reflections on Barcelona.  Toibin as a writer  has an uncanny ability to enter the character of his "mothers", especially  His father died when he was very young, and his mother raised him and his brother.

 Testament recounts" in riveting detail a defiant mother's story of her son, who has been taken from her by men she regards as fanatics."  Having read the book, one keeps turning the pages, as the imagining of her thoughts and feelings are revealed, as the whole narrative of the Crucifixion unfolds. One can hardly put the book down; it is best read in one sitting.

"The Assumption of the Virgin" (1518.  Titian.   High Altar of the
Basilica de Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. 

The idea for Testament, which premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2011, originally rose out of Toibin’s desire to tell the story not being told about the Crucifixion.  He was inspired by incongruence between two paintings.  The first was the “Assumption of the Virgin” (1518) by Italian Rennaisance painter, Titian.

Tintoretto's "The Crucifixion(1565)"
Scuola Grande de San Rocco, Venice 

 The second contrasting painting  is Tintoretto’s “The Crucifixion (1565). Depicting gritty humanity clustering going about their business, around Christ as he is being brought down from the cross when "it is finished".  .

Toibin is quoted as saying:  “It struck me, the distance between the two things, between the ideal and the real, And it struck me that that story had not been told, the story of what it might’ve been like on that day, in real time for somebody, and they they would remember it.”  

Coming from Wexford, south of Dublin, Toibin was steeped in Catholocism as a child, serving as an altar boy, riding his bike to church in the early morning to serve mass.  He climbed the steeple to ring the bell.  He attended Catholic school.  The Church defined not only his faith and his community, but also his nascent understanding of the arts.  Beauty was a cathedral designed by Pugin, Mozart’s “Ave verum corpus”, and the ritualistic language of the service.  Thinking back on the richness  of his childhood, Toibin told  NPR's Terry Gross, “It’s very difficult to say that Catholicism did damage.” 

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Note: Was so disappointed to miss this play in NYC last year but felt satisfied to have a chance to see Carley Perloff's production at ACT, starring Seana McKenna as "Mary"  The play takes place in  a historical theater in SF.   Colm Toibin was in SF for the opening, and I talked with him at the Mechanics Library (see that blog entry; I originally met him at M on the Bund, and at Fudan University in Shanghai when he was judge for the first Booker Asian Prize )

The NYT said:'"Beautiful and daring..." and Bloomberg, "Electrifying...shatteringly, trenchantly human."  I, however, came out, thinking that I preferred the literature, and that I was not happy with the enactment of a Mary that did not fit the words I had read.

When asked why he expanded the monologue into  the novella, Toibin replied, "I made it much longer with the sort of detail which fiction will bear and drama will not.  (Drama is a much more brutal, elemental, and stark form).  I wrote it as a novel because I was worried that it might not always be performed as a play, and at least a novel is always available." ) That about sums it up.  Read the novella.
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Finally, from Dan Rubin's interview with playwright Colm Toibin(via email)

The article is prefaced with this quote: Toibin says, "Don't spare anyone when you're working.  In other words, if you're working, and there's a sudden moment when you realize you're going to tell a story, and that story is going to be very difficult for you or for others, tell it."

When asked about historical accuracy, and research Toibin revealed:  "I went to Ephesus (the city in modern day Turkey where, according to legend, Mary lived ou the final years of her life), I read the Gospels a good deal.  And some books-- especially Marina Warner's book on the cult of the Virgin Mary (Alone of All Her Sex:  The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary) and the historical writings of Geza Vermes.  I was not as concerned about historical accuracy as emotional accuracy....

"What was the first image for Testament, and what rhythm did it move into?"   She was alone and old and in a house, and afraid.  That image.  And then the voice which reflected that, the tone staccato, heightened, both fearful and fierce."