Theatre in Review: Doubt (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)

	Liev Schreiber, Amy Ryan. Photo: Joan Marcus

"What do you do when you're not sure?" It's not a question that seems to trouble anyone in America these days, but that's why there's no time like the present for Doubt, John Patrick Shanley's investigation into faith, suspicion, and the urge to do good, no matter the collateral damage. First seen in the 2004-05 season, it was taken by many as an oblique comment on the hubris that led to disaster in Iraq. But it speaks loudly and clearly to our current obsession with demonization and fake news. This state of perpetual relevance is, arguably, what makes a play a classic.

The above words are spoken by Father Flynn, addressing his Bronx parish at Sunday Mass; it is 1964, and, ostensibly, he is referring to the grief that followed the assassination of John Kennedy. But he expands on the point masterfully, offering consolation to those afflicted by any secret sorrow: "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty," he says. "When you are lost, you are not alone." It's a magisterial sermon, a carefully reasoned, sophisticated theological argument rendered in terms anyone can understand.

But it offends Sister Aloysius, principal of the parish grade school and a modern Savonarola determined to tear out the subtlest evil before it takes root. She finds the devil lurking in the strangest places: The song "Frosty the Snowman," she notes, "espouses a pagan belief in magic," adding, "If the music were more somber, people would realize the images are disturbing and the song heretical." Indeed, she has no love for the annual school Christmas pageant, recalling, "Last year the girl playing Our Lady was wearing lipstick. I was waiting in the wings for that little jade." To her, anything that smacks of frivolity is an occasion of sin: Art, dance, and music classes are dismissed as so much wasted time. Instructing her young colleague Sister James not to become too involved with her students, she says, "Boys are made of gravel, soot, and tar paper. Boys are a different breed."

And boys are very much on Sister Aloysius's mind, thanks to the nagging fear that something improper is happening between Father Flynn and Donald, a twelve-year-old transfer student and the only Black child in the school. Employing the impressionable Sister James as a spy, Sister Aloysius gathers evidence that's sketchy, if provocative: Following a one-on-one meeting in the rectory, the boy returned to class, visibly upset and with the smell of liquor on his breath. Confronted, Father Flynn says he caught the boy drinking altar wine; for Donald's sake, he tried to cover up the incident but, now that the secret is out, he will have to be dismissed from the ranks of Mass servers. Sister Aloysius, not satisfied with this explanation -- "Satisfaction is a vice," she insists -- decides that Father Flynn must go, even if means resorting to subterfuge. "When you take a step to address wrongdoing," she insists, "you are taking a step away from God, but in His service." Or, as Niccolo Machiavelli often noted, the ends justify the means.

The agony, and fascination, of Doubt is that Shanley demands we judge this situation based on carefully limited evidence. And, across a taut, elegantly constructed, ninety minutes, you're likely to find yourself revising your opinion time and time again. For example, it's 1964 and Vatican II is in full swing: Altars are being turned around, the Mass is being held in English, and more changes are on the way. Father Flynn's casual approach and openness to the world are representative of a church in transition; Sister Aloysius is a dinosaur, worried about declining vocations and violently opposed to new ideas. Why wouldn't she resent her popular rival?

But, for a contemporary audience, is it possible to see Doubt without a pained awareness of the pedophile scandals that have scarred the church for the last two decades? Shanley plants slightly odd details, like Father Flynn's preference for longer fingernails, that leave one wondering. There's also a certain evasiveness built into the priest's manner that makes one think twice. Of course, he might simply be trying to protect a fragile, damaged boy from excessive scrutiny. Couldn't he?

It's also possible that Sister Aloysisus' simmering anger comes from navigating the male-controlled church power structure that ignores and diminishes her. The parish's elderly, unworldly pastor turns a deaf ear to her concerns, for example, and she is actively protecting another nun who is going blind, for fear of losing another member of her staff. "There's no man I can go to, and men run everything," she notes, bitterly and not entirely incorrectly.

Then again, her justice, offered without mercy, is a destructive force that spares no one, not even her. And, despite having previously lived in the outside world -- she is a widow whose husband was killed in World War II -- Sister Aloysius cannot tolerate moral complexity. This fact is laid bare in the play's most explosive scene, a parent-teacher with Mrs. Muller, Donald's mother, who informs the nun, that 1) Donald is probably gay, 2) his abusive father beats him up, and 3) the priest's attentions are invaluable to the boy, at any price.

Indeed, Doubt is a cunningly constructed trap, its effects lingering long after the final curtain. Cherry Jones, who created the role of Sister Aloysius in 2004, has noted that the play functions like a Rorschach test: At audience talkbacks for that production, the more conservative members of the audience tended to side with Sister Aloysius while those leaning to the left saw Father Flynn as the injured party. But discuss the play with any three friends and be prepared for three different conclusions. (In a way, the play anticipates Justine Triet's Oscar-winning screenplay for Anatomy of a Fall, with its did-she-or-didn't-she murder plot.) Sister Aloysius' campaign ends with a damaged boy left heartbroken and two adults struggling with profound loss of faith. Still, why does Father Flynn make his climactic choice (not to be discussed here)? Is it not a sign of culpability?

As good as Douglas Hughes' original production was, Scott Ellis' Roundabout staging is even better, thanks to an exquisite design and a cast that teases out every nuance from Shanley's script. Amy Ryan, stepping in at the last moment when Tyne Daly took ill, is a chilling presence as Sister Aloysius, eyeballing the world with corrosive skepticism, her flat delivery turning each line into a hanging' judge's sentence. (As a product of parochial education, I can attest to the blood-curdling accuracy of the characterization.) Liev Schreiber makes Father Flynn the cagiest of clerics, his natural warmth and gift for homiletics not entirely obscuring a nagging sense of mystery about his character. Zoe Kazan is poignant as Sister James, whose delight in her work withers under the glare of Sister Aloysius's suspicions. Neatly putting the entire production in her pocketbook is Quincy Tyler Bernstine as Mrs. Muller, who -- politely, but with unmistakable contempt -- informs Sister Aloysius that she is a fool.

David Rockwell's scenic design is gorgeously evocative, beginning with a preset look that features a darkened stage and louvered windows through which light struggles to get through. His artful use of a turntable seamlessly delivers both Sister Aloysius' office and a garden on the parish grounds. Kenneth Posner's lighting adds a late-autumn gravity to these tense proceedings. Linda Cho's costumes are extremely well-observed; note how Mrs. Muller shows up at the school in her best ensemble, as parents did in those days. Mikaal Sulaiman blends a faintly eerie form of plainsong with various effects -- children's voices, street traffic, crows -- into a highly vivid soundscape.

Shanley dedicates Doubt "to the many orders of Catholic nuns who devoted their lives to serving others in hospitals, schools, and retirement homes. Though they have been much maligned and ridiculed, who among us has been so generous?" It's a good question; for all the havoc she wreaks, the sincerity of Sister Aloysius can't be denied; her critique of the church is, at times, oddly contemporary. And yet, why do her efforts lead to so much misery? Perhaps she should listen more closely to Father Flynn's sermon. Then again, Shanley seemingly wonders, maybe doubt is all any of us really has, and maybe there's grace in that. --David Barbour