At Seven Tyrants Studios (1019 Seymour Street) until December 14, 2018
Tickets from $32 at tickets.tyrantstudios.com
Posted December 1, 2018
“What do you do when you’re not sure?” That’s how playwright John Patrick Shanley has Father Flynn open multi award-winning Doubt. It premiered off-Broadway in 2004 and subsequently won the New York Drama Desk Award, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2005. The film adaptation, starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, opened in 2007 garnering Streep an Academy Award for Best Actress.
When in doubt, I’m not sure what I do, either. Having seen Doubt three times over the years, I have vacillated between suspecting Sister Aloysius is right about Father Flynn, or thinking she’s a meddling, narrow-minded, aging school principal who’s dead wrong when she accuses him of “interfering” with twelve-year-old Donald Muller, the first African-American student at St. Nicholas Church School.
The time is 1964, it’s the Bronx and even the whiff of sexual abuse will not be tolerated by Sister Aloysius.
But is she wrong about Father Flynn?
So much depends on how Sister Aloysius is played in each production. In this Seven Tyrants production, directed by Bill Devine, Tallulah Winkelman portrays her as vindictive and nasty. With missionary zeal, the Sister appears to be out to ruin Father Flynn, a caring, decent parish priest who coaches the boys’ basketball team. She abandons reason, jumps to conclusions with very little evidence, lies about her fact-finding and it is only in the dying moments of the play that she questions her actions. Winkelman’s Sister Aloysius does not appear to have a bit of Christian charity.
In other productions, Sister Aloysius has been portrayed somewhat more gently: a nun who truly wants to protect her students and, in her eagerness, allows herself to be seduced by possibility.
And that is exactly where the playwright wants us to find ourselves: in doubt.
Doubt is a four-hander and includes Sister James (Olivia Lang), a young teacher full of enthusiasm and affection for her Grade 8 class. Lang is almost translucent and ethereal in the role and we feel we can see right through to her troubled heart.
Father Flynn is robustly played by David Thomas Newham. This is a priest who is eager to make the church a welcoming place. He suggests, much to Sister Aloysius’ consternation, that the Christmas pageant be more ‘secular’ and could even include, perhaps, Frosty The Snowman. Newham is genial and in the basketball practise, relaxed with the boys we do not see. In his clerical robes he is serious, sober – very much the picture of a decent, thoughtful priest.
When Sister Aloysius invites Donald Muller’s mother in for a conversation, we see – somewhat to our shock – that Mrs. Muller, rigorously and firmly played by Liza Huget, is not worried about the relationship between Father Flynn and her son. What is paramount is that Donald finish school, go to university and rise above intolerance and poverty that plagues the family.
“What kind of a mother are you?” a horrified Sister Aloysius asks. But who is she to judge?
This Seven Tyrants production takes place in a small studio in the infamous, old Penthouse on Seymour Street. The space – up several flights of stair (no elevator) – is small but comfortable. Set designers Lynda and Gary Chu have wisely kept the set very spare: a desk and chair stage right; a lovely oak pulpit stage left with a back-lit stained-glass window behind it. The garden scene features a concrete garden bench and some statuary.
The question always remains with me: why does Father Flynn capitulate so readily? Does he actually have something to hide or has the situation at St. Nicholas Church School simply become too toxic?
Playwright Shanley leaves us exactly where he wants us: in doubt. Often subtitled A Parable, Doubt is also a cautionary tale about jumping to conclusions.