Marius von Mayenburg's The Martyr has been produced and continues to be produced in many European theatres. The play tells the story of Benjamin, a teenager raised by a single mother. When Benjamin's mother is told that her son is having problems at school, her first thought is drugs. But the boy "sticks" to a different needle - the Bible. The schoolboy finds all the answers in the Scriptures and turns them into a tool of torture and terror. Benjamin thinks he is the only one who knows what is good and what is bad. This leads to conflicts, confrontation and psychological warfare. At school, he declares war on debauchery. He refuses to go swimming in the pool because girls in bikinis offend his religious feelings. And that's just the beginning.

Dramatist M. von Mayenburg wrote Martyr in 2012, the same year he staged it himself at the Schaubühne Theatre in Berlin. The play, which consists of 27 short and specific scenes, resembles a film script and has a broad and topical subject matter: the battle of ideas, the role of extremism and religion in society, the contradictions of Western society, the fragmentation, the threat of fanaticism and how this correlates with religion. The play reveals the total disruption of adult society in the face of Christian radicalism. Theatre critics have compared the effect of the play to the explosion of a hand grenade - the text exposes neoliberalism, political correctness and tolerance, and criticizes the superstitions that tempt young minds with great candour. "In Martyr, the insanity of sexual and social maturation, the passions are equated with the zeal of faith.

The theatre critic Andrius Jevsejevas, reviewing the three productions of von Mayenburg's Martyr in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland in 2015, points out that Benjamin Ziudel does not make any compromises, continuously creates confusion, and is involved in conflicts. He communicates with his lonely mother, his classmates and his teachers only by spouting straightforwardly understood truths from the Scriptures, demanding unconditional adherence to dogmas that are half a thousand years old. The most heated conflict erupts between him, a religious fundamentalist, and his biology teacher Erika Rot, an equally radical atheist Darwinist. I am tired of hiding and pretending to be sick when I am the only one who is well. I am tired of seeing Lydia's naked shoulders glistening like glazed doughnuts in the shower mist. I'm tired of staring at Melanie's crotch through rusty glasses as she swims in front of me. [...] I may not have understood it before, but now I understand it, I feel it clearly, and even my body betrays it, so today, on the day of Saint Polycarp, I declare war on wickedness [...].