Theater review: Doubt, A Parable

by Arnold Wayne Jones of Dallas Voice

If there’s one thing that makes all gay people uncomfortable to talk about, it’s child abuse. I know from experience that every time I hear on the news that a male high school teacher (or, god help me, elementary school) has been arrested for indecency with a child, I find myself chanting, “Please let it not be a boy.” It’s just a fact that many homophobic people assume gays are interested in young boys — that, in fact, the way you “become” gay is by having an older gay man seduce you at an impressionable age.

Add religion into the mix — as the Catholic priest scandals of the last decade have proven — and you’re just asking for trouble and pain and, well, doubt.

Which is why John Patrick Shanley is so insidiously, infuriatingly, good at his job.

Shanley is, oddly enough, a writer known for fluffy romantic comedies (Moonstruck, Joe vs. the Volcano) on film, but for dire, heavy dramas (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Defiance) onstage. His duality can be frustrating, because he forces you to confront his characters with entirely different sets of expectations.

Doubt, A Parable — the play for which Shanley is best known, and for which he won the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize — is easier to watch than it is to talk about afterwards, but talk about it you must. Even though it’s all about sex and priests and young boys.

It’s set in 1964, decades before the scandals made the news, but around the time when you can be sure the seeds of impropriety were planted. St. Nicholas is a church middle school in the Bronx, run with an iron fist by its principal, Sister Aloysius (Nancy Sherrard). Sr. Aloysius isn’t just old-school, she’s practically medieval. Skeptical, cold, as starched as the habit she wears, she’s a bully, disparaging such wasteful enterprises as teaching art and dance, discouraging her staff from actually befriending the students and who is on a crusade to rid the world of the sinful, lazy implement of Satan: the ballpoint pen.

She’s hardly the nicest nun you’ll likely meet, but her moral rectitude doesn’t stop with the schoolchildren. Sr. Aloysius suspects the parish pastor and religion instructor, Father Flynn (Regan Adair), may have made “advances” upon Donald Muller, the only African-American student in the school. But all she really has is suspicion.

“You haven’t any proof,” Fr. Flynn says when she finally confronts him. “No,” replies Sr. Aloysius, “but I have my certainty.”

And therein lies the conundrum of the play: If you’re sure of something, but have no evidence of it, is it worth a reputation — a life — to pursue that belief? And isn’t that exactly what religion is?

Heady stuff, but not dry. In WaterTower Theatre’s excellent production the themes are clear and cloudy at the same time: The issues are obvious, but there’s no simple resolution (after the final curtain, audience members were still debating whether Fr. Flynn did what he was accused of, though I suffered from no such doubt).

“The truth makes a bad sermon,” Fr. Flynn advises the naïve Sr. James (Jessica Wiggers). “It tends to be confusing and have no clear conclusion.”

Neither do parables — at least not here. Is Sr. Aloysius on a witch-hunt, or a guardian angel of her students? It’s complicated further by the appearance of Donald Muller’s mother (M. Denise Lee), who tacitly acknowledges that her son may be “that way” … so does it matter if Fr. Flynn saw it first?

Doubt is a delicately balanced play that can go wrong easily. Aloysius is sanctimonious and brittle, but she may be right; Fr. Flynn is a genial Noo Yawk priest — but is he also a predator? The performances, skilled all, don’t help you decide. Adair’s is so easy-going and non-threatening, you want to believe in his innocence, which makes the moral issues murkier. Is there such thing as a gentle pedophile? Sherrard doesn’t hesitate to be a bitch, making her the least sympathetic of detectives.

Just as good is Lee in one brief scene. She humanizes Mrs. Muller’s ambivalence about the charges, embodying a laser-like focus that is both maternal and horrific but never unreachable. Wiggers captures Sr. James’ essential personality trait: as eager as a puppy to please and be pleasant.

There’s a lot going on between the dialogue in Doubt — so much it might behoove a second sitting to fully gather the scope of what Shanley and director Terry Martin are trying to convey. But whatever side you fall on, the production is exceedingly well-acted — of that, there can be no doubt.