Left & cover – Alison Whyte. Photos – Lisa TomasettiA set constructed of black marble complete with steps leading to a granite grotto, a slight, smoky haze, no whiff of incense.
She is late. Laid over in Lourdes, perhaps.
We wait for the visitation of the Virgin.
Suddenly, space plunged into the blackness of space, bible black, blacker than the obsidian stage.
Lights up, candle bright, a statue in light, a living image, layered in the iconography of the incarnate.
The effigy physically divests itself of the paraphernalia – robes, plush toy sheep – yes, Mary had a little lamb – red, iridescent, exoskeletal heart, false boob, and finally, the face.
The myth unmasked.
Imara Savage's production of Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary has a strong and startling start, Emma Valente's lighting design forming a holy alliance with designer Elizabeth Gadsby in presenting a panoply of the art and apocrypha of the mother of Jesus.
Stripped of symbol, pared of representation, we have the human Mary, mother not of a Messiah, but a flesh and blood boy, who attracted misfits and malcontents, a posse of apostles who proselytised and percolated a personality cult, followers who fabricated a faith.
Alison Whyte assumes the earthly, human Mary, heartbroken mother who witnesses her son's execution, a base and barbaric act prosecuted at the top of a hill.
Not only haunted by that trauma, she is hounded by her son's acolytes hell bent, not heaven sent, on appropriating her story for the propagation of the faith.
But true to it's title, this the testament of Mary, and Whyte delivers that testimony with an uncompromising ferocity in a twin spin of physical and vocal dexterity.
No mention of immaculate conception, assumption into heaven and short shrift to the annunciation.
Indeed, there's palpable umbrage at the idea of her husband being depicted as a cosmic cuckold.
The episodes of Lazarus, the wedding at Cana, and the days after the crucifixion are cast into the shadows of the spurious, as her history is hijacked and misdirected by her son's disciples.
It's enough to make a mother cross.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
The Testament of Mary
by Colm Tóibín
Director Imara Savage
Venue: Wharf 1 Theatre | Pier 4/5 Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay
Dates: 13 – February 2017
Tickets: $60 – $44
Bookings: 02 9250 1777 | www.sydneytheatre.com.au
