DOUBT: A PARABLE. To 12 January.

London.

DOUBT: A PARABLE
by John Patrick Shanley.

Tricycle Theatre To 12 January 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm & 5, 12 Dec, 9 Jan 2pm.
BSL Signed 13 Dec.
Runs 1hr 25min No interval.

TICKETS: 020 7328 1000.
www.tricycle.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 November.

Sister Aloysius gets it right?
Doubt starts with a sermon, among the most doubt-free forms of discourse. It’s delivered by Father Flynn, a photogenic young Catholic priest in the Bronx, 1964. The Catholic school presided over by Sister Aloysius is perhaps just beginning to see a newer world in its young teacher Sister James. But Aloysius is intent on knocking anything like enthusiasm out of her. Music and drama are barely tolerated, even history mustn’t become too interesting.

In any popularity stake Flynn, who doubles religious instruction with basketball training at the school, would knock the older woman out of court. But. But. She understands this traditional world, which forms a refuge from bullying for its first Black pupil.

There may be little sympathy in her manner (and that little judiciously provided by Dearbhla Molloy’s finely-judged performance) towards her young colleague, new to a mixed school, but she acknowledges Sister James’ good qualities as a teacher while giving her stern advice.

And she can smell a rat, as she does with Flynn. Aloysius may be nasty, but she’s shrewd. And she’s so sure-seeming, until the very last line, that she’ll employ a lie to find the truth (as she says, facing evil means moving away from God). Flynn may be, in every sense, nicely convincing. But stories emerging in recent years about some priests and some pupils in US Catholic schools of the era, suggest darker possibilities.

Sister Aloysius increasingly becomes, if not a caped, then a wimpled crusader, up against establishment complacency and, more surprisingly, the unconcern of the boy’s mother. She just wants her son to gain a High School place, while the lad himself seems most concerned at being denied the status of Altar-boy for Flynn’s religious services.

This four-hander’s really a two-handed combat. In Nicolas Kent’s production Aloysius wins hands-down. Flynn the clean-cut school-hero is so uni-dimensional it’s only the question of his secret activities that gives him any interest. Molloy humanises Sister Aloysius, investing her with a self-awareness which is the root of doubt, however strongly repressed. This gives complexity to the otherwise efficient functionalism of production and play.

Father Flynn: Padraic Delaney.
Sister Aloysius: Dearbhla Molloy.
Sister James: Marcella Plunkett.
Mrs Muller: Nikki Amuka-Bird.

Director: Nicolas Kent.
Designer: John Gunter.
Lighting: Raphael McCutcheon.
Sound: Tom Hackley.
Costume: Sydney Florence.
Dialect coach: Penny Dyer.
Assistant director: Cressida Brown.

2007-11-27 12:15:22