Every now and then, just when we start to think that the countless articles in New York media lamenting the death of American theater might actually have some merit, somebody goes ahead and writes a play so perfect that even the most jaded and dour critics are moved to break out the rhetorical pom-poms and cheer themselves hoarse. John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable, which won a Pulitzer, four Tonys and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 2005—and is a shoo-in for a mess of Oscars this year—is one of those plays. So if I were to shamelessly indulge my taste for hyperbole and call this 90-minute drama the finest play of the century thus far (a claim I’d be hard-pressed to back up), I would not be far out of line with the majority of critical opinion.
Exaggeration aside, Doubt is a stunningly fine work of dramatic literature, and certainly Shanley’s best. The playwright’s chronic tendencies towards frivolity and pique are nowhere to be found as he establishes with grace and beauty a furious battle of wills, set in 1963, between Sister Aloysius (Jayne Taini), a nun of such traditional temperament that she refuses to accept the arrival of the ballpoint pen in her parish school, let alone the Second Vatican Council, and Father Flynn (John Behlmann), a progressive priest who wears his nails “a little long” and may or may not be molesting one of his students. Their conflict, which ostensibly grows out of Aloysius’ concern for the students but eventually encompasses the larger societal battles over the nature of the Church and race in America (the boy in question is the school’s first black student) has more than one innocent victim. While the boy, whom we never see, seems to make it out all right, the same cannot be said of Sister James (Jennifer Lee Taylor), the kindhearted young teacher whose concerns about Flynn give Aloysius the excuse to begin her inquisition. It’s an extraordinary work, and it would be very difficult for a director to really screw it up.
Rose Riordan’s production, which opened last Friday at Portland Center Stage, is certainly competent. Taini is a pillar of unshakable faith and certainty, not to mention impeccable comic timing, and Taylor is the very picture of nerdy, insecure youth. She shrinks herself into her habit, so ashamed by the fight she inadvertently provokes that she almost disappears—no small feat for an actress who just played Viola in Twelfth Night. Behlmann is as charismatic as you could hope for, but there is no scent of danger about him. He comes across as unquestionably righteous, which he should not—the play, after all, is all about doubt. If we walk out of the theater uniformly convinced that he was entirely pure in his dealings with his boys, something has gone wrong. Perhaps the problem is Behlmann’s cheerful Bronx accent, which makes him sound more like an underdog baseball player than a potential child molester. This may be intentional.
In all, I have only one strong objection to Riordan’s production, and one that may be petty. Why, when we are told that the school is in the middle of New York City, does the sound design indicate a windswept New England mountaintop? Never once to we hear any city noise, or even a passing train; just lots and lots of wind. William Bloodgood’s set looks as if it could be anywhere, but the ambient noise assures us that we can’t be in the big city.
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