Fenwick vs. Felicity
Students earn scholarships
Minster vs. Southeastern
Home > Blogs > Arts and Entertainment > Archives > 2009 > March > 22 > Entry
Certainty breeds the opposite in “Doubt”
The name of John Patrick Shanley’s play is “Doubt: A Parable,” but it could just as easily be called “Be Careful What You Wish For.”
Sister Aloysius, the central character in the drama about right, wrong, truth and perception, gets what she works for with an obsession approaching insanity.
Her victory quickly turns hollow, however. She’s left uncertain that she has done the right thing because of what that will mean for others.
The award-winning 2004 play had its local premiere Friday, March 20, in a compelling and entertaining production by The Human Race Theatre. Blessed with a lean and powerful script of brief, sharply focused scenes, director Richard Hess assembled a terrific cast to bring it to life.
Wendy Barrie-Wilson plays Sister Aloysius, the principal of St. Nicholas School in the Bronx in 1964, a location rendered with clarity and detail by set designer Mark Halpin.
She’s an old-school Catholic with no use for new liberalizing influences emanating from Rome. When she finds reason to suspect that a young priest in the parish has taken improper interest in the only black boy in the school, she sets out to destroy the man.
Although Barrie-Wilson plays her with a twinkle in her eye, that gleam indicates the pleasure her character takes in wielding power over others, including a young nun Sister James (Jennifer Joplin) and the boy’s mother (Sarah Ellen Stephens as Mrs. Muller), who only wants to get her boy through the eighth grade and into high school. She doesn’t want to rock the boat.
But the principal isn’t going to allow anyone around her to straddle the fence.
Her suspect, who quickly becomes her prey, is Father Brendan Flynn, played by Timothy Fannon with a truly effective mixture of guilty behavior, self-effacing concern for his good name, a hint of martyrdom and an unspoken deviousness to turn this confrontation to his advantage.
The fact that it’s possible to read him any of those ways and all of them is crucial to the success of a play motivated to inspire the audience to think about how judgments are formulated in the absence of proof — how doubts are pushed aside.
Sister James and Mrs. Mullen side with the priest for completely different reasons that have as much to do with their own self-interests as with perceived fact. The young nun makes up her mind that her stern principal is wrong. The mother just wants her son to have a better chance in life.
The play opens with the priest asking, in a sermon, “What do you do when you aren’t sure?” It ends with Sister Aloysius, the last person anyone familiar with her would suspect to have doubts, suddenly a prisoner of them.
Playwright John Patrick Shanley doesn’t provide a simple verdict. He does something better. He encourages us to judge how and why those who judge do so in a 90-minute drama with no intermission and little chance to evade the core of his story.
“Doubt: A Parable” will continue through April 5 at 126 N. Main St. Tickets are $15.50-$36 at (937) 228-3630, (888) 228-3630 or www.ticketcenterstage.com.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Review, Theater
Comments
By Reseller Hosting
January 2, 2010 6:21 PM | Link to this
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!