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No ‘Doubt’ about it: Alliance gets it right
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
Sister Aloysius listens to Father Flynn’s metaphorical sermon about a sailor lost at sea and finds it mighty suspect. Surely, he’s hiding something.
It’s 1964. JFK is dead. And the modern age is slowly eating away at the archaic, iron-clad regimen of the Roman Catholic Church — an institution that takes a good knuckle-rapping in John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt.” A withering testament to the dangers of intolerance and the destructive nature of power, Shanley’s tautly written Pulitzer Prize winner is a devastating clincher for an exceptionally strong 2007-2008 Alliance Theatre season.
Directed with a smart mixture of passion and precision by Susan V. Booth, “Doubt” showcases a remarkable company of actors and designers, resulting in a nearly flawless 90 minutes of theatrical miracle-making — suspenseful, provocative, wholly absorbing.
There’s not much room for love and redemption in this tightly circumscribed world. As envisioned by designers Todd Rosenthal (sets) and Deb Sullivan (lighting), heaven is just a tiny sliver of light through a stained glass window in a soaring Gothic church. Calvary has been reduced to a trinity of small trees and thorny rosebushes in a claustrophobic courtyard. And Sister Aloysius’ office alternates between a backroom for the enlisting of spies and a courtroom where witnesses are called to give testimony.
When Sister Aloyisus (Pamela Nyberg) suspects Father Flynn (Thomas Piper) of being a little too friendly with his charges, she uses her Iago-like powers of insinuation to taint the mind of the brightly innocent Sister James (Cara Mantella).
But is Father Flynn simply trying to console and counsel the school’s first African-American student — or does he have darker motives?
To be sure, there’s something more sinister at work at St. Nicholas Church and School than the use of ballpoint pens (which Sister Aloysius thinks will be the death of penmanship) and the attempt to introduce “Frosty the Snowman” into the Christmas pageant. (“Frosty,” the old nun bristles comically, has a pagan agenda.)
What redeems “Doubt” from being just another potboiler about a sex scandal or religious witchhunt is its ambiguity. We never know who to believe. The cunning Sister Aloysius is determined to destroy Father Flynn, and the purported victim’s mother (Donna Biscoe) is determined to save her boy from a brutal public-school system and bullying father. The way Shanley weaves a discussion of race and sexuality into this delicate dance is masterful.
Though at times rather caricaturish in her depiction of the twisted old nun, Nyberg is generally quite good. Mantella exploits the potential of her character’s naivete with finely calibrated timing, so that Sister James’ meltdown is richly comic. (“I love ‘Frosty the Snowman!’”) And Piper, who bounces his basketball lesson off audience members as if they were his students, trades Brian F. O’Byrne’s creepy Broadway take on the priest for sturdy, old-fashioned realness.
Dressed in a stunning purple suit and pillbox hat (by Mariann Verheyen), Biscoe informs Mrs. Muller with the don’t ask, don’t tell desperation of a mother trying to save her son from being sacrificed over a personal vendetta. Though her performance is the briefest, it may be the best.
At the end of the day, Shanley’s parable doesn’t so much condemn the recent Catholic sex scandals as comment on the sheer venality of the human psyche. With her gnawing anger and flimsy evidence, Sister Aloysius banishes everything but her doubt.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through May 4. $20-$50. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org
Bottom line: Stunning.
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By BPJ
April 11, 2008 3:36 PM | Link to this
Picking up from my post of a few days ago (about timeliness & prominence of arts coverage), this time the AJC got it right. The review came out promptly, and it was on page 1, above the fold, in the print edition, of the “Movies & more” section (now about the name “movies & more”…..) I was so glad to see this; more, please.