(L to R) Amaka Umeh, Nancy Palk, Michelle Monteith, Belinda Corpuz, and Sabryn Rock in Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
- Title: Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary
- Written by: Erin Shields
- Performed by: Belinda Corpuz, Michelle Monteith, Nancy Palk, Sabryn Rock, Amaka Umeh
- Director: Ellen McDougall
- Company: Crow’s Theatre
- Venue: Crow’s Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs until May 3
Anachronism is often a compelling foundation on which to stage a play. When such a clashing of aesthetics works – the diverse hip hop of founding father saga Hamilton, for instance, or the slangy snark of Abe Lincoln comedy Oh, Mary!, or even the ridiculousness of Biblical rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar – it’s electric. The blurring of time can help audiences connect stories of the ancient past with the feelings of the here and now. It makes the old feel new.
To its credit, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Erin Shields’s mouthfully titled exploration of Jesus Christ from the perspective of the women in his orbit, attempts such a blending of vibes. In its meandering world premiere production at Crow’s Theatre, the Marys – Virgin, Magdalene and Salome, mostly, though there are others – wear track suits.
But Ellen McDougall’s production gets drunk on its own water-turned-wine, offering a confusing mishmash of a Bible story neither rooted in the present moment nor caught in the talons of the past. On Moi Tran’s geometric set – a carpeted playground similar to Ting-Huan Christine Urquhart’s for You, Always, Shields’s last world premiere – Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary isn’t anachronistic. It’s just muddy.
Some of that murk comes from the writing. Shields, known for adapting classics through a feminist lens, has long immersed herself in worlds possibly new to her audiences, from the foamy seascape of the Trojan War in Ransacking Troy to the leafy oasis of the Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost.
In the past, the playwright has taken time to spell out necessary givens – character names, pertinent battles, societal circumstances, relevant history. Never has a Shields play demanded that an audience arrive at the theatre with a degree in classics in order to understand the work.
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But something’s gone wrong with Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary. Its first half in particular demands a surprisingly deep knowledge of the New Testament, which isn’t helped by the fact that the four Marys – played valiantly by Belinda Corpuz, Michelle Monteith, Nancy Palk and Sabryn Rock – often speak in chorus, breaking up lines such that it’s seldom clear which Mary is doing the proselytizing.
Keep in mind: I say all this as the daughter of an organist for the United States’s oldest Methodist church. I spent plenty of weekends at Sunday school as a kid.
Regardless, I struggled to keep up with the comings and goings of Shields’s many, many Marys. Not even the show program came to my rescue, since each Mary is referred to by number rather than name.
Even more baffling: Amaka Umeh’s character, funnily named Not-A-Mary, is actually, in part, a Mary. Salome, to be precise. To be fair, Umeh also steps in as other figures – a pushy TV producer, an unctuous broadcast interviewer – but in the end, Not-A-Mary is, in fact, a Mary, squashing the joke and further obfuscating the premise of the play.
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If there’s one thing to commend about the otherwise fraught production, it’s the performances, both individually and as a group. Corpuz brings youthful, guitar-strumming whimsy to the ensemble, countered by Umeh’s bawdier showmanship. Rock beautifully underlines Magdalene’s bruised sense of duty; Monteith does the same as Jesus’s mother. Palk, too, makes fine use of her dry wit and gentle warmth, adding pleasant texture to the production.
But try as they might – and they try very hard – the actors can’t seem to make sense of the play or production, either. It’s only in the second half, while the last supper bakes in clever drawers built into the set, that the play firmly takes hold. And, importantly, it’s around that shift that the actors settle into one part rather than hopping between multiple characters. But by then, it’s too late – we’ve already sat through a lengthy dance number, two musical performances and a hurricane of poeticized scripture.
McDougall offers a few compelling images – a puzzle-piece feast for Jesus and his disciples, azure headscarves that pop against the red-orange track suits, a mock film shoot that showcases Monteith’s range in particular – but they neither elevate the writing nor propel it forward once the play’s conclusion becomes obvious.
Shields has had a big year with a number of premieres. She has another one still to come, with new plays scheduled to be produced by Soulpepper, Citadel, Crow’s and Nightwood theatres. She’s among this country’s most dependable playwrights and, until now, I’d conceded she was immune to her plays bleeding into one another, a common result of playwrights pumping out original work.
As such, it brings me no pleasure to report that Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary is a misfire. Shields’s batting average remains pretty good; one out of a zillion plays not working isn’t so bad. But this writer and premise ought to have been as divine a duo as loaves and fishes. Instead, the play feels like the hay in Jesus’s manger: brittle, beige and just out of reach from its raison d’être.