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Padraic Delaney and Dearbhla Molloy in Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable |
‘Catholic’ writer Shanley
looks behind sisters’ acts
DOUBT: A PARABLE
Tricycle Theatre
NEVER has there been a more prolific Irish-American writer (Eugene O’Neill aside) than John Patrick Shanley, whose play-writing credits include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Women of Manhattan. His film script for Moonstruck won Writers Guild and Academy Awards.
His most recent piece for the theatre, Doubt, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2005 and he moved from being an off-Broadway ‘Catholic’ writer to a Broadway playwright of universal themes.
The writer sets this play in his own back yard in 1964 New York, shortly after JFK’s assassination, the early Civil Rights movement and Vatican II, which stressed the pastoral rather than the doctrinal nature of the Catholic Church.
Father Flynn (Padraic Delaney), a Bronx boy and an ambitious, left-leaning progressive, is accused by Sister Aloysius (Dearbhla Molloy) of taking an unhealthy interest in the only black boy at St Nicholas School, of which she is headmistress. She is aided and abetted by the naive, romantic Sister James (Marcella Plunkett).
The conflict between priest and nun is complex. It may be seen as an embittered, arch-conservative’s dislike of a modern, working-class priest with aspirations above his station: she tells Father Flynn that the only reason he is a man of the cloth is because there is a “decline in vocations”. Or is she a racist? Or does she, like Sister James, harbour a secret desire for the charismatic priest?
Part political allegory and part detective story, it is a taut, evocative, beautifully crafted play. So why does Nicholas Kent’s London premiere disappoint?
The problem is it concentrates too much on the politics. Sister Aloysius was too much of a martinet and her moral certainty suspect – when she has doubts, it does not convince. I found Delaney’s performance too guilt-ridden – one was not left with a sense of uncertainty
Marcella Plunkett’s young Sister was at times engaging, but she is too much of an ineffectual liberal in this political allegory.
Nevertheless, credit must be given to the Tricycle for getting Shanley to premiere his great work in County Kilburn rather than the West End.
Until January 12
020 7328 1000 |
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