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The world premier of Alison
Cotes' dramatisation of her research into the life of Mary Magdalen was
staged in St John's Cathedral, during Brisbane's Cathedrals Week in May.
The venue was stunning, with an audience of mostly middle-aged women,
packed into the sanctuary and overflowing into the canons' stalls. The
archbishop's throne was reserved for soprano Lyn Moorfoot, supporting
Barbara Lowing who played Mary Magdalen in an otherwise solo 70-minute
performance.
A lecture on portraits of Mary Magdalen brings Mary Magdalene to life,
centre-stage, on the site of the high altar. In a remarkable performance
Barbara Lowing presented the earthy, hot-blooded, loving Mary Magdalen
who was neglected by official commentators of Church history in Western
Christendom.
A fine piece of dramatic irony turns the tables on Rome. The only prop
is a screen used for the introductory 'lecture' on Mary Magdalen as a
specimen of womanhood. On this screen an image of Pope Gregory the Great
appears. He is on trial, charged with the Church's prostitution of the
character of Mary M. Mary delivers a venomous prosecution, replete with
learned and lascivious allusions, accusing Rome's hagiographers of attaching
myths to women saints.
Heavily weighted with bookish language, which would have benefited from
some serious editing, the text is leavened by an amusing travelogue from
the south of France, where worship of Mary Magdalene as a popular saint
continues to this day. But there was no shortage of passion as Mary M
told the story of the cross. Her visceral account of taking the body of
Jesus down, the pain of it, the banal detail of grief, gave the production
dramatic authenticity.
Although Alison Cotes did not write the play as a theological work, its
venue at St John's Cathedral sanctioned it for public consumption as a
work for theological reflection. Devotionally, the text unpacks scripture
as might an Ignatian meditation. It is, as such, deeply personal, and
the one place where speculation is appropriate. However, as a public performance
it must be subject to critical appraisal by the church.
The question is: if the general public pay to see a portrayal of Mary
M in the cathedral, the church's seat of teaching (as well as creative
experiment) should they have a right to believe it to be doctrinally sound?
Marriage of fact and fiction has become de rigueur in contemporary western
culture, but this play raises an interesting question - should speculation
and theology be merged to create insight into doctrine? The drama makes
good use of research to resurrect scripture as story, although it is somewhat
dated in its biblical scholarship, As a church historical critique it
scores a number of telling points on Rome's "misogyny as a doctrine".
Mary M defiantly restores scorned womanhood by mounting the high altar
- a woman dominating centre- stage - which, however, tends to mirror the
patristic error of the past. In the end, the words Mary attributes to
Jesus in the garden, "You can do it on your own", neglect the essential
doctrine for the New Age - the coming of the Holy Spirit.
As the punch line it is weak, as is the description of Jesus', final,
ghostly disappearance. This one-woman play hints at the power of love,
but falls well short of that transcending power which sent the friends
of Jesus into all the world, into exile and to martyrdom for love of him.
The experience remains a private one, which leaves Mary sometimes lonely,
still in love with "a nice Jewish boy". It underestimates this woman's
capacity for friendship, portraying her love for Jesus as a somewhat adolescent
passion, which she did not grow out of. It is a pity that the multi-media
presentation of 'the lecture' did not develop into a visual extravaganza
to dramatize the monologue of the gorgeous Mary M. The visual production
gave the impression of having run out of puff before the premiere. Lyn
Moorfoot's soprano aired songs ancient and modern in the cathedral sanctuary,
and excellent use of The Song of Songs brought scripture to life as erotic
poetry. Holy Lies, Unholy Truth is a thorough rebuttal of Rome's portrayal
of Mary Magdalen. But it uses her to redress the balance for womanhood
as remorselessly as the Church Fathers used her for their own purposes.
As Mary M remarks with, perhaps, unconscious irony, "Truth suffers along
the way."
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