“I knew if Colm wrote a version of Mary’s story it wouldn’t be blue and watery,” said Shaw. “She’s a blank virgin mother without personality, whose virtues don’t seem to include anything you’d want to explore as a child-not lively, not chatty, never said anything remotely interesting.”Īnd yet, Shaw, 54, a helplessly interesting actor with sharp features and an even sharper intellect, will play that virgin-and on Broadway, no less-when Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, directed by Shaw’s longtime collaborator Deborah Warner, begins previews on March 26 at the Walter Kerr Theatre. “She seemed to be so watery and blue,” said Shaw of the Virgin’s typically insipid portrayal in art. She didn’t care much for the sculpture-”this revolting statue, this mass-produced blemished virgin with marble all around”-or for the Virgin, either.Ĭrunching an apple during a snatched rehearsal break on the ninth floor of a midtown high-rise, Shaw recalled her early associations with the biblical Mary. Anything but watery and blue Hugo GlendinningĪs a girl in County Cork, the Irish actor Fiona Shaw walked past a statue of the Virgin Mary every day on her way to school.
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