21 July 2008 Written by Jens Peters Print This Post  Email This Post

If you find the questions raised in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code intriguing, but you’re dissatisfied with the lack of serious argumentation and trustworthy sources, I recommend going to see The Magdalene Mysteries at the Southwark Playhouse. Here, Jacek Ludwig Scarso’s Elastic Theatre tells the story of this controversial saint from several different points of views: from her relationship to Jesus over her discovery of his resurrection up to the apocryphal Gospel she wrote, and medieval depictions of her life. Through a combination of text, dance, and music, the company discovers a sensuous, moving, and humane dimension behind the question: Who was Mary Magdalene? This allows them to investigate her story on several levels.

Having absolutely no background in dance and coming from a rather text-based approach, I found the first ten minutes of the show very dense. But the more I watched, the more I found the piece had a lot to offer. For example, music and movements soon develop a narrative quality that is ingeniously interwoven with and often set against the ancient texts form the basis of the spoken word. One aspect of Mary’s identity, her nature as sinner, is split off from the main character (Sandra Shirley) and manifested in three Shadows (Lola Maury, Wanda Caddick, Katharine Yates). Their main function is the expression of a mixture of sexiness, self-castigation, and pain.

This comes to dominate the evening’s physical narrative to such an extent that it threatens to become one-dimensional. Is there really no other interesting aspect in Mary Magdalene’s corporeality? By expressing the two conflicting views of her as virgin and whore, the company seems to fall into the same reductive trap as the very texts they set themselves against. Nonetheless, the choreography is convincing through the performers’ high level of skill, which produces images that are both intense and moving.

The music, mainly choral singing and accompaniment by a single guitar, is as powerful in its message as the dance, but often achieves a higher level of subtlety – probably because it can blend more easily with both word and movement. Mircha Mangiacotti conjures up tunes from his guitar that often were downright eerie. The breadth of his tonal possibilities is revealed to the full when he creates three wholly convincing bell-strokes (!) during the scene of Jesus’ betrayal.

This marks the evenings climax, both thematically and emotionally. Suddenly Jesus (Alexandre Achour) is left alone on the desolate stage. At this moment, he is wholly human: afraid, vulnerable, desperately running from one corner to the other. Then came one of these felicitous coincidences that spice up every special theatre evening: when Jesus is finally ready to confront his death, and walks slowly to his doom, we hear a train booming over our heads. It is as if Jesus’ destiny is hitting him with the inexorable force of a steam-engine. No escape. No way out. I could hear him whisper the most appropriate expression of this situation: “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachtani” - My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

It is these human dimensions that give this production a special strength. Mary Magdalene is never wholly good, nor Saint Peter (Vincent Jerome) wholly antagonistic. Instead, we see their self-doubt, which allows us to understand that for example Peter’s attacks of Mary are as much an escape from his own insecurity as they are a struggle for power. It is a pity that this balance is partly forsaken when the company dramatises the medieval treatments of Mary Magdalene. Amir Sardari’s rendering of the story from The Golden Legend in the character of Jacobus de Voragine lays it bare to ridicule. His voice, naïve on the surface, but with mocking irony trembling behind it, does not allow the audience to judge for itself what the story has to say. Until this point, the production provides ample space for audience ruminations and was free from such opinionated deliveries.

The Magdalene Mysteries ends in the power struggle that came to dictate the currently popular view of this female saint. A Church Father (Thomas Thoroe, wonderful in the deep-felt earnestness of his tendentious beliefs) encounters Mary Magdalene’s gospel, written in sand. Unable to accept it and its challenge of hierarchical religion, he has it eradicated. Instead, the sand is used to inscribe a cross on the ground – the sign of an institutional Christianity as developing from the time of Emperor Constantine onwards. The truths, the doubts, as well as the human characters will be lost in the mists of time. Hopefully unlike this production, which deserves a greater audience than it had on this day!