The Marys in Jesus’ entourage have long been a bit of a mystery.

The problems begin when you try to count them. There are anywhere from three to seven women named Mary in the Gospels, slippery creatures who alternately stand out and blend into each other.

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There’s the Virgin Mary, of course. She’s a discrete Mary. There’s Mary Magdalene, often portrayed as a sex worker and foil to the purity of Jesus’ mother. Then we have Mary the sister of Martha from the Gospel of Luke and Mary of Bethany from the Gospel of John, who are almost certainly the same person (and who some Christian traditions conflate with Mary Magdalene). Finally, there are Mary of Clopas, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and “the other Mary,” all of whom appear in crucifixion narratives; they are also, possibly, the same person.

It is this corps of women, separating and then coming together like a school of fish, who make up the centre of Erin Shields’s new play, the aptly titled Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, on now through May 3 at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto. Rather than trying to puzzle out which one is which, she leans into their nebulous nature, using it as a vehicle to explore what it means to be a powerful woman in a story written by men.

Shields — whose work has won many accolades, including the Governor General’s Award for English-language drama — has a long-standing interest in feminist reinterpretations of classic texts. This can be seen in her 2018 adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which Satan is a woman (with a more complicated and........

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