Synopsis Doubt is a spellbinding play about the nature of faith. As the character Father Flynn says in the opening speech - a sermon - 'What do you do when you're not sure?' Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964. An imperious older nun suspects a popular young priest of inappropriate behavior with a student. Armed with nothing more than a resolute belief in her suspicion and a few circumstantial details, she instigates a relentless campaign to remove the priest, enlisting the help of a subordinate nun and the child's tormented mother. The simple, yet ever-shifting plot leaves all four characters and the audience wondering whether they were justified in their thoughts, motives and actions. Are you sure? Doubt is a serious drama about complicated human and social issues, it's also very engaging and highly entertaining. This is a play that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and only concludes with a conversation in the bar afterwards.
John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt received its British premiere this week (26 November, previews from 22 November) at north London’s Tricycle Theatre, in a production directed by artistic director Nicolas Kent, which has a limited run until 12 January 2008.
Doubt is set in a Catholic School in the Bronx in 1964 and follows the diverse points of view of its four characters after Sister Aloysius expresses her doubt about the nature of Father Flynn’s relationship with the school’s first black pupil. Sister Aloysius reveals her concerns about Father Flynn to the inexperienced but enthusiastic Sister James. A verbal battle of wills ensues as Sister Aloysius instigates a campaign to remove the priest from the institution. The truth is never revealed and all four characters and the audience are left in doubt about the validity of their thoughts and judgments.
Doubt received its world premiere in 2004 Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club, later transferring to Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre where it won four Tony awards and a Pulitzer Prize. The new UK production stars Dearbhla Molloy as the obstinate Sister Aloysius, Padraic Delaney as Father Flynn, Marcella Plunkett as Sister James and Nikki Amuka Bird as the student’s mother, Mrs Muller.
First night critics admired Doubt’s courage in tackling “vexed and unfashionable views” but felt that something was lacking in the overall narrative, making the production “a disappointment”. Opinions on Dearbhla Molloy and Padraic Delaney were also mixed; some found them “monotonous”, while others praised Molloy’s “superb performance”. There was praise for Nicolas Kent’s direction which turns “the screw at all the right places”, but it appears that, if critics are right, its future beyond Kilburn is “doubtful”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (three stars) - “Nicolas Kent’s production turns the screw at all the right places, though the acting of Delaney and the usually more luminous Molloy sometimes verges on the monotonous. John Gunter’s neat but clunky set moves between pulpit, school garden and Sister’s office with noisy efficiency. The 80-minute play seems contrived until the resonating power of it breaks through; and then it packs an emotional and moral punch not dissimilar to Terence Rattigan at his best in boy-centred plays like The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version, the difference being that here, we never meet the young man himself.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (three stars) - “Scepticism, said Brecht, can move mountains. But, while John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama similarly hymns the virtues of honest doubt, it doesn't always practice what it preaches. As an 80-minute moral thriller, it is highly effective. The rigidity of its form, however, allows little latitude for exploration of its enlightened ideas ... Nicolas Kent's production, however, is well acted, and skilfully ratchets up the tension. Dearbhla Molloy avoids making Sister Aloysius too palpable a villain by highlighting her flecks of humanity. Padraic Delaney is excellent as Father Flynn, implying an edge of unease beneath the charm. I admire the play for raising big issues. I just wish Shanley's parable tested, rather than simply reinforced, our easy liberal assumptions about the dangers of moral certainty and the delights of doubt.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph - “Where the play does seem to me daring is its suggestion, similar to Alan Bennett's in The History Boys, that the occasional fumble between adult and child may not always be the most mortal of sins, and the drama's insistence that doubt and even despair are often at the very centre of spiritual faith ... Though I believe Doubt to be flawed, I salute Shanley for raising such vexed and unfashionable views. Dearbhla Molloy gives a superb performance … Her portrayal seems to encapsulate many of the paradoxes of faith … Padraic Delaney as the fresh-faced priest seems blessed with all the attractive warmth and spontaneity Sister Aloysius' holy gorgon apparently lacks, and there is strong support from Nikki Amuka-Bird … Nicolas Kent's absorbing production richly deserves a West End transfer but in these dumbed-down, pagan days, I fear Doubt's commercial prospects could prove, well, doubtful.”
Simon Edge in the Express (three stars) - “Its central puzzle - whether there is truth in an apparently malicious charge of child-molesting - seems less about three-dimensional characters clashing in a real conflict than the writer’s transparent desire to manipulate them, and us, for a pre-ordained dramatic purpose … Dearbhla Molloy has undeniable stage presence but she plays Sister Aloysius as a pantomime villain, making it implausible that her suspicion could ever be valid, while Padraic Delaney never lets us believe the charges might be true until the script tells us so. For me, things perked up when Donald’s mother (Nikki Amuka-Bird) suggested her effeminate son might not mind being interfered with, which was the first time the play escaped from cliché into the unexpected. But it was too little, too late, and I couldn’t help think that Hollywood does this kind of thing - twists and turns that mess with the audience’s head - so much better, and without the theatrical self-importance.”
Fiona Mountford in the Evening Standard (two stars) - “It's hard to imagine Nicolas Kent's lacklustre production keeping tongues wagging on the long walk back down Kilburn High Road; indeed, my friend and I had covered several more engaging topics by the time we reached the station … For this to sparkle instead of sputter, the balance of doubt needs to be precision-maintained throughout. But here it's not: we're mighty certain that behind all Sister Aloysius' squinty intensity lies a good heart, rather than a vendetta against twitchy Father Flynn and his oddly revealing tracksuit trousers. Molloy neatly suggests that the sister is tired of an oppressively phallocentric church hierarchy, but not so that she would jeopardise her school. It strikes me as a cheap ploy to make the purported object of Flynn's attentions the school's first black pupil, as if this racial element automatically ups the dramatic ante. The opposite is the case, as attention is diluted away from the fascinating core topic of the abuse of power, in all its forms. Doubt: a disappointment.”
Sam Marlowe in The Times (three stars) - “Shanley’s is an intriguing and potentially absorbing premise, but, despite Nicolas Kent’s well-acted production, the play is neither sufficiently tough-minded and complex, nor sparky enough to make a persuasive thriller. Shanley moves his underwritten characters about like chess pieces rather than people. The play’s structure, of contained discursive scenes interspersed with Flynn’s sermons or teaching monologues, is theatrically uninteresting; and it doesn’t begin to crackle with tension until it draws close to its tantalisingly ambiguous ending. John Gunter’s monolithic set design suggests the weighty stone of religious edifices, constructed out of and upon faith; a basketball hoop on the court where Father Flynn and the boys play hangs over the priest’s head like a tarnished halo … Shanley’s writing, though, needs more power and precision to be a serious provocation.”
“Where’s your compassion?” “Nowhere you can get at it.” This frosty exchange between the open-minded Catholic priest and the formidable Sister Aloysius is at the centre of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, a short sharp shock of a play that was first seen Off-Broadway in 2004.
The setting is a school in the Bronx in the autumn of 1964 and this historical moment meshes several key moods of liberalising change: the recent Camelot era of President Kennedy; the civil rights movement; and the challenge to the Catholic Church of the spirit of ecumenism.
At the start, Father Flynn (Padraic Delaney) delivers a Sunday sermon about the virtues of living with doubts; you are never alone, he suggests. He teaches physical education and religion in the school where the head, Sister Aloysius (Dearbhla Molloy), is isolated in certainty as she inducts a new, fresh teacher, Sister James (Marcella Plunkett) into her obstinate ways.
Having set up his potential for conflict, Shanley then kindles a fire by introducing a plot line rife with ambiguity and danger: Father Flynn has been seen with the school’s one black pupil in a private meeting. The boy has been drinking altar wine. Father Flynn is summoned by Sister Aloysius.
Father Flynn wears his nails long and takes three lumps of sugar in his tea. That strikes me as nothing at all, but it’s enough for Sister Aloysius (we used to have a Jesuit teacher at my Catholic grammar school whose idea of heaven was a Nat King Cole LP and an apple, but he seemed alright). With recent revelations about large-scale child abuse in Catholic education in America, the witch hunt by the reactionaries seems almost justified in retrospect.
But another complication arrives in a great scene between Sister Aloysius and the boy’s mother (beautifully played, with simmering rage and dignity, by Nikki Amuka-Bird) who reveals that the 12-year-old boy is indeed “that way” and needed a friend because of his violent father. This propels the play to a surprise conclusion still fraught with uncertainty.
Nicolas Kent’s production turns the screw at all the right places, though the acting of Delaney and the usually more luminous Molloy sometimes verges on the monotonous. John Gunter’s neat but clunky set moves between pulpit, school garden and Sister’s office with noisy efficiency.
The 80-minute play seems contrived until the resonating power of it breaks through; and then it packs an emotional and moral punch not dissimilar to Terence Rattigan at his best in boy-centred plays like The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version, the difference being that here, we never meet the young man himself.
In America Doubt won a Tony award and a Pulitzer Prize so it is a real coup for the Tricycle to stage it in London, although it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. Not a single word of John Patrick Shanley's script is wasted and there are four superb performances: Dearbhla Molloy as Sister Aloysius, seemingly unaffected by doubt in her campaign against a possibly abusive priest despite no concrete evidence; Padraic Delaney, at first attractive and progressive but far too quick to hide behind the established order of the church; Marcella Plunkett as Sister James praying for the innocence of a man she clarly admires (or more) but who takes advantage of her naivety; and Nikki Amuka-Bird as the boy's mother who is shockingly prepared to turn a blind eye so long as her son graduates. Shanley does not take the easy course of providing an answer leaving the auience to draw their own conclusions, if they can. 2008 is only nine days old but my only doubt is that I will not see a better, more powerful or affecting play all year. - David Baxter
09 Jan 08
Facsinating play about the clash between old-fashioned rigid religious values and a more modern approach but the production seems too lightweight. The crucial scene between mother and headmistress was very impressive but the odds were loaded against the headmistress by the actor playing Father Flynn being played with rather too much innocence. - Fred
28 Nov 07
In this short one act play the intransigent and dessicated Mother Superior pits herself against the personable and enthusiastic Father Flynn over her belief that he is having some sort of illicit relationship with a new black boy in the school. The guileless younger nun is caught in the web and vacillates in her suspicion, and when the boy's mother enters the equation her response is quite unexpected. This is a gripping and engaging evening that will have you caught up in the conflict but unsure who to believe. Highly recommended. - kilburncat
Film information line 020 7328 1900. Society of London Theatre member. The theatre has a cafe - La Brunelloise Traiteur - serving pre theatre snacks and meals from £2-£6.
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