The celestial blue cape is gone, as are the candles, the lilies and all trappings of religious veneration.
Moments later, when Shaw appears in character - a tall, lean figure with burning eyes - Mary has been stripped off all those iconic symbols. Clad in Mary’s traditional blue cloak, she holds a single stalk of lilies to signify her purity and is encircled by lighted votive candles - a beloved but distant image of worship. Before the play begins, she has positioned Shaw inside a Plexiglas cube, sitting in a classic pose of the Blessed Virgin familiar from countless religious paintings and church statuary. Helmer Deborah Warner, a first-hand creative collaborator on this hugely imaginative work, succinctly conveys the point of it in a single powerful image. It’s safe to say you’ve never seen anything like it. And that’s before the house lights even go down on “The Testament of Mary.” The matchless Fiona Shaw commands the stage in this solo piece adapted by Irish scribe Colm Toibin from the 2012 novella he fashioned as an interior monologue delivered by Mary, the mother of the historical Christ and, in Christian legend, the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven.
Where to begin? Well, there’s a live vulture on stage, and an uprooted tree suspended in mid-air, and a pool of water that appears to be bottomless.
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