Preliminary Notes on John Patrick Shanley's Doubt
1. The prospect of watching a play about a zealous nun hunting down a priest whom she suspects of abusing an eighth-grader was bleak, but our reluctance was overcome by the allure of another prospect, that of seeing Cherry Jones and Brían F. O'Byrne. Ms Jones might as well be crowned Queen of Broadway, because everything that she does is astonishing. Mr O'Byrne, lately seen in Frozen, has a way of being terrifying while sitting very still.
2. In the event, Doubt is not about whether the priest has being doing what the nun thinks he's being doing. It is, rather, the confrontation of a strong woman and a weak man. The man's strength is all bluster, a garment bestowed by society generally and by his employer specifically. The woman's weakness is entirely de jure - not an iota of facto. Cherry Jones plays Sister Aloysius, the principal of a Catholic grammar school in the Bronx, in the fall of 1964, who has a nose for, and an aversion to, showing off. Ms Jones, wearing no visible makeup, her features obscured by heavy eyeglasses, looks twenty years older than her 48 years. Her lips are often so pursed that they disappear. The stunt of her performance, if it's not improper to speak of stunts, is that the embodiment of Sister Aloysius's dry flatness, while effacing all of Ms Jones's own features, brings to the stage a mightily robust woman whom it is ultimately impossible not to like. Brían F. O'Byrne plays Father Flynn, a popular preacher with a knack for coaching basketball (and suspiciously long fingernails). Watching his air of easy bonhomie curdle in the glare of Sister Aloysius' grim certainty is as unnerving as the actor's awful exchange of stares with Swoozie Kurtz in Frozen.
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Comments
Here are a few quick thoughts and then back to work:
1. I found Doubt to be blatantly gimmicky and therefore its power is sadly diluted.
2. I don't believe the story is about Father Flynn at all. Through the muck, I see a story about Sister Aloysius who lives in a world that she can and will, at all costs, control. She chooses and justifies her behavior in the name of her faith.
3. The questions I see in this story are, "How does our religion and our interpretation of it, strict or otherwise, lead us to behave? And how does that behavior affect those around us?"
4. The scene with Mrs. Muller is pivotal, and should be stronger. The little boy is the primary victim in this story and he gets lost in the shuffle.
5. In the end, I enjoyed the play. I can certainly relate to worlds colliding. Our safe, black & white, somewhat controlled, known world that is daily, uncomfortably shaken by the gray world around us is simply life. I prefer to acknowledge those gray worlds and learn from them and base decisions on them - but I'm not a Catholic or any other religion for that matter. I don't believe Sister Aloysius would ever waiver in action, only in thought.
Posted by: Flather | December 21, 2004 10:40 AM