"The Testament Of Mary" To Close Sunday- Page 3

[whatever2]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 1:10am

That's not the only place where the author glossed over scripture. Toibin's Mary seemed to have completely blanked on the circumstances surrounding the conception of her son, including a visit from a certain angel named Gabriel, who did go to the trouble explaining that she was going to give birth to the Son of God. The Mary we meet in the book is completely amnesic with respect to her son's divine paternity, which for me made the entire fantasia frustrating as hell!

[PlayItAgain]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 2:57am

^ you sir, are a moron.

[whatever2]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 12:39pm

^ um ... ok.

[wonkit]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 12:54pm

Not to get in the middle here, but this play (and the book it is based on) are not Sunday school lessons. The author attempted to portray Mary as a human woman whose life, at its close, gave her extraordinary pain and regret. She is not some little icon, garbed in blue and holding a rose. She is a tough ancient Jewish woman who is being manipulated by men who want her to support their version of what happened with Jesus. I don't suppose it would be a spoiler to now point out that the last lines of the play are something to the effect that the disciples are telling her that her son's death will redeem the world, and she says, as any human mother would, it wasn't worth it. As a person, she saw her son tortured and murdered in the cruelest manner imaginable. The author is not denying what people believe - he is painting a dark and deeply emotional portrait of a human being. As a mother, I completely understood his Mary, and I felt tremendous compassion for her and her suffering. Which is more than one can feel for a painting on a church wall.

Updated On: 5/7/13 at 12:54 PM

[whatever2]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 7:22pm

but, wonkit, I don't think the book does that at all. I had no idea who the woman in that story was ... I assume, given the title he chose and the general plot line he crafted, the author meant to subvert a familiar -- VERY familiar -- story. and that's what I was hoping for when I bought the book (gave it to my mother as a Christmas present, in fact).

while the narrative was familiar, the character was alien. she literally spoke with no frame of reference for her own life history.

instead of being oblivious to her unique -- and, though not a believer, i'll say compelling -- life story, and instead of focusing so extensively on things that, while plausible and interesting enough, may or may not have happened, it would have been far more satisfying if the author had devoted some of his considerable talent to portraying a woman whose pain and regret were informed by that biography.

i was hoping for an unconventional glimpse into the inner life of the mother of christ; what I read was a conventional glimpse into the inner life of some 2000 year old bag lady from nazareth. so, yeah -- frustrating as hell.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 8:13pm

I had no trouble with the text. My criticism comes from the bizarre production it was given. To my mind it didn't serve the material at all.

[wonkit]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 9:43pm

Whatever2 - I can understand your disappointment that this was not a book that supports the idea of Mary as the mother of the son of God. But there are plenty of faith-based books that can give you that picture if that is what you are looking for. The whole point of the book is an exploration of human nature and not divine nature, which is unknowable except as an article of faith. The Mary in the book is a woman who reveres her earthly husband (the story of the chair that she will not allow anyone to sit in); embraces happily the birth of Jesus like any other expectant mother who anticipates maternal happiness (there is no angel - only her own radiant happiness in her pregnancy); and raises her child feeling that his childhood was normal and ordinary and happy (she talks a number of times about watching Jesus and Joseph working and walking together as father and son). This is not Jesus of the Bible. He hesitates to claim that he is the son of God and does so under pressure from the "misfits" around him. The raising of Lazarus is not some wonderful miracle: Lazarus suffers in his restored life and faces the horror of dying not once but twice. The water into wine is described in a way that suggests it was a set-up like a carnival trick - to increase the notoriety of Jesus. This has nothing to do with belief - it is a story of a woman in a place in history as she might have experienced it. And it illuminates the Bible story by pointing out that we cannot know what her life must have been like for her - it was in any case not necessarily the way the gospels described it, for all any of us knows.

[whatever2]

Posted: 5/7/13 at 11:09pm

wonkit: respectfully, you've gone someplace completely outside the realm of my intention. i'm not looking for a faith-based book ... honest -- I don't have a dog in that race. interesting you assume that, though. :)

I was going to edit my last post to focus my criticism a bit: toibin's mary was aware of many aspects of the historical mary's biography: the apostles becoming figures of (vague) menace or (not-so-vague) annoyance in her life ... check (and intriguing); (biblical) men are dumber than (biblical) women ... been done a lot, but toibin employed his characteristic wit here, so check; mary freaked out at the crucifixion and ran away ... hugely challenging, and a big check.

but what was completely missing is any self-awareness of the one huge, overwhelming thing that made her mary: her kid was the frickin' son of god. toibin went on for 96 pages without once giving her character a thought, feeling, or recollection that filtered her experience through the prism of that overwhelming reality.

page after page, what i kept hoping to read was some inner narrative of mary's unique circumstance: f*ck you god for doing this to me ... how dare you put me in this position without my consent ... how could you give me this burden without the grace to carry it. anything like that would have served the concept far better. instead of writing a testament of *mary*, toibin gave us a testament of an anonymous 2000 year old Nazarene.

jesus' divinity is what makes mary's story compelling. lose that, and you're just serving up the ruminations of a bystander. I was not frustrated because i need mary to be Jesus' mommy; i was frustrated by the missed opportunity.

[Movidude742]

Posted: 5/8/13 at 3:38am

Whatever, I think you are confusing the biblical Mary, mother of God with the play's Mary the mother of Joshua.

Here there be spoilers.

She comments that he was not immaculately conceived. She rolls her eyes at the thought that he was the son of God, and she should know, she was there, or something like that.

To the Mary of the play, he is not a savior. He is not a messiah. He was just her son. Her baby. And she regrets. is frustrated by the fact that the history she witnessed and the history that is being reported are diverging more and more every day.

But more than that, she just doesn't care about the story that is being told, no mater how great. She is a mother who has to live with the fact that she outlived her own child, which is a price she feels she never should have had to pay for anything

[wonkit]

Posted: 5/8/13 at 7:21am

Thank you, movie dude, for reiterating my point. This is not a book about divinity at all but about humanity. This Mary does not believe that Jesus is the son of God. Even the "resurrection" is her dream, co-opted by the disciples.

[HeyMrMusic]

Posted: 5/8/13 at 12:32pm

I think that's what whatever2 was referring to as a "missed opportunity."

[whatever2]

Posted: 5/8/13 at 12:41pm

i appreciate the attempts to rehabilitate my opinion, but my views are not faith-based, and i wasn't disappointed because toibin didn't hew to my preconceived notions of the biblical mary. i was disappointed because he *ignored* key plot points in a well-known narrative.

miriam is not just another mom, and yeshua is not just another son. they come with a backstory. the author clearly meant to riff on that -- the genre requires that he either incorporate the major plot points in the existing "mary tale" or explain them away. toibin did neither.

(i keep wanting to contrast gregory maguire, but i'll resist.)

what we got was a generic mother's fear, anger, and anguish, when the author has the talent and grounding to give us the mother of christ's (again, the fictional human -- no divinity required) fear, anger, and anguish. the former's been done better, and the latter would have been more compelling.