In Magdalene, Mark St. Germain, continuing to mine the vein of real-life people who have become clouded in mythology, gives us an imagined meeting between Simon Peter, soon to become first in the line of Catholic popes, and the titular Mary, soon to be sidelined as an important figure in the Christian faith. The work probes the uncomfortable inconsistencies across the various accounts in the century following Jesus’s death;1 asks why there are no women priests in Catholicism; and challenges the notion that a physical church is necessary for practice of the Christ’s worship.2 As St. Germain notes in his playwright interview, “it’s not something that could play in the Kennedy Center right now.” What does a parable mean? Wherein lies a miracle? These are the play’s questions.
Something I can’t unhear: the idea that when speaking of Peter, never the sharpest tool in the shed, Jesus meant Matthew 16:18 as a joke.
The festival has backed up the production with a sturdy dramaturgical note and many links for additional reading.
1How much would you trust a strictly oral account, handed down by his advisers and their successors, of what Warren Harding did and said?
2St. Germain’s Mary reminds Peter that Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the landlords.”
- Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
- Magdalene, by Mark St. Germain, directed by Elena Araoz