It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since Doubt: A Parable first appeared Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theater Club and then transferred to Broadway winning the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, NY Drama Critics Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. John Patrick Shanley’s compact and powerful morality play pitting a determined nun against a charismatic priest she suspects of sexual misconduct still shakes and shatters. Scott Ellis’s revival for Roundabout Theater Company is as sturdy and upsetting as Doug Hughes’ original and Shanley’s self-directed 2008 film version. This is especially impressive considering Amy Ryan stepped into the lead of Sister Aloysius and had only a few weeks of rehearsal when Tyne Daly had to withdraw for medical reasons.
The plot is concise and tightly drawn. The setting is a Bronx Catholic middle school in 1964. The extremely conservative principal Sister Aloysius (she doesn’t even like her students to use ball-point pens or to waste their time with art or dance) suspects the popular, modern-thinking priest Father Flynn (a subtle and complex Liev Schreiber) of engaging in an “improper” relationship with the school’s only African-American student. She has no direct evidence, but based on observations from the boy’s teacher Sister James (a wonderfully sympathetic Zoe Kazan) and other details, Sister Aloysius is dead set on removing Flynn from her school and the parish.
The drama derives from that lack of clear-cut evidence. Is Sister Aloysius an accurate judge of character or a judgmental bigot? Is Father Flynn a forward-looking progressive or a sly deceiver? Ellis stages their confrontations with economy and strength, with David Rockwell’s revolving detailed set and Kenneth Posner’s moody lighting appropriately setting the scene. In addition to Ryan, Schreiber and Kazan’s pitch-perfect performances, Quincy Tyler Bernstine adds dimensions of complexity and nuance as the student’s conflicted mother.
If there are any caveats to the exemplary production, it’s that Schreiber is a little too convincing in his denials of guilt. Without revealing too much of Shanley’s clever plot turns, towards the end of the play, Father Flynn’s genial veneer cracks and we are left with ambiguity. In the original production, Brian F. O’Byrne added more layers to Flynn. He was charming and initially likable but also manipulative and slippery (In his first encounter with Sister Aloysius, he sits behind her desk, attempting to usurp her authority.) Schreiber is too endearing and non-threatening, so the final outcome is not as many-shaded. Despite this flaw, Doubt remains a probing, thought-provoking examination of the chasm between certainty and questioning in how we conduct our lives.
