Gaiety Theatre, Dublin (studio)
Rachel Hewer (director)
80 (length)
09 October 2026 (released)
1 h
The most famous public execution in history. Nails longer than your hand. Flesh hammered onto a cross to bleed out under the blazing sun. “Save yourself,” some mocked. Soldiers, the grieving, curious onlookers—witnesses all. Gospel truth, they say.
The tricky business of memory, truth and historicising runs like blood through the veins of Testament, a one-act opera adapted from Colm Tóibín’s novella The Testament of Mary (Viking, 2012), with music by Tarik O’Regan. Premiered in July at the Galway International Arts Festival, this searing 80-minute opera may yet win the sort of recognition that eluded the 2013 Broadway staging of The Testament of Mary.
At the heart of this story is Mary, the grieving mother, reduced to a marginal figure in historical reinterpretations of the crucifixion. Tóibín restores her to the centre of the narrative, relaying events through Mary’s memories and humanising her in the process. Mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty is immense as the ageing Mary, embodying the loss and anger of a bereaved mother, haunted by the past, hounded by history’s gatekeepers and plagued by sleepless nights.
A prisoner in her own home, Mary is closely watched over by three men. Scrolls ever at the ready, Paul (tenor Oisín Ó Dálaigh), Marcus (tenor Ben Escorcio) and John (baritone David Kennedy) probe her for revelations about her departed son, seeking to shape the narrative that will endure. “What’s written down will change the world!” one exclaims. A battle for words. The final words.
In this Irish National Opera production, director Rachael Hewer and choreographer Emma Woods pull the strings with a bracing sense of pace and an eye for resonant detail. Francis O’Connor’s enveloping, amphitheatre-shaped set gains an extra dimension from a suspended mirror—a clever rhetorical and metaphorical device that reflects snapshots of the unfolding events from shifting perspectives. At one point, blink and you would miss it, the audience itself appears on its surface, a sea of silent witnesses.
A fine balance is struck between visual and sonic stimulation, with Kevin Treacy’s atmospheric lighting a subtly potent protagonist. Seven musicians share the stage with the singers and actors. Under the baton of conductor Elaine Kelly, Sarah Sew (violin), Andreea Banciu (viola), David Edmonds (cello), Lina Andonovska (flute/piccolo), Conor Sheil (clarinet), Ariel Hernandez (mandolin) and Dermot Dunne (accordion) weave seamlessly between musical and theatrical roles.
The music, a heady brew of riffing minimalism, ethereal spirituality and swirling choral polyphony, is spellbinding. Sacred and secular elements seem to speak both to the followers’ belief in Jesus’ divinity and to Mary’s doubts about it. Even if O’Regan had composed nothing beyond Acallam na Senórach: An Irish Colloquy (Harmonia Mundi, 2011) and A Celestial Map of the Sky (NMC, 2017), he could still be regarded as one of the most compelling of modern composers. His score for Testament is another major achievement.
Tóibín’s taut libretto relays key events in Mary’s life. Past, present and dreamlike imagery merge in a provocative welter of emotions: Lazarus, resurrected and zombie-like, strikes a chilling chord. The joyful revelry of the wedding at Cana contrasts starkly with the haunting image of the infant Jesus (Rowan Crowley) resting at the foot of the cross.
Ultimately, it is Mary’s words that leave the most indelible mark. A red river of words pours down the black cross, carrying the devastating verdict: “It was not worth it.” Of the cruelty of Roman justice, she observes: “I had seen a Roman execution before, one of their own. It was most foul.”
Low-key religious protests against the perceived blasphemy of Testament miss the touching humanity of Tóibín’s portrayal of an independent-minded woman who is no one’s fool. Her times were brutal. But what of today? As the nightmarish prospect of live-streamed public executions threatens to drag American justice back to Roman times, it is precisely this humanity that is sorely needed.
In an age when truth is so easily manipulated, Mary’s testimony is not merely a reckoning with the past, but a warning for the present. History has its gospel. Mary has the final word.
Photo credit: Patrick Redmond
