Theatre: Doubt: A Parable
There are no easy answers in John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt: A Parable. In fact, there are no answers at all. The play, set in St Nicholas Catholic church and school in the Bronx, New York, in 1964, is concerned with the topical issue of clerical child abuse and the larger theme of managing uncertainty, says director Candice Moore.
DOUBT: A PARABLE
Sweet and Sour Productions
There are no easy answers in John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play . In fact, there are no answers at all. The play, set in St Nicholas Catholic church and school in the Bronx, New York, in 1964, is concerned with the topical issue of clerical child abuse and the larger theme of managing uncertainty, says director Candice Moore.
"You think you're going to get an answer to a certain issue or a character's dilemma, and then you don't," Moore says. "It leaves you hanging. Just as you think you're about to find something out, off you go in a different direction."
, first performed off-Broadway in 2004, went on to become a Broadway hit, and eventually a film starring Meryl Streep and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. This production by Sweet and Sour Productions is its Hong Kong premiere.
The play has only four characters. Rob Archibald plays Father Brendan Flynn, a likeable progressive parish priest. Vickie Rummun plays Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the school's principal and a conservative disciplinarian who dislikes the priest.
Heather Cooper plays Sister James, an impressionable young nun who believes Father Flynn may be guilty of sexual misconduct with a black student called Donald Muller, and Alexandra Jacobs plays the boy's mother.
The crux of the play is the question of Father Flynn's guilt or innocence, which Shanley leaves unresolved, with strong arguments presented for both. The audience members are asked either to make up their own minds or to come to terms with uncertainty about the truth.
Shanley contends that one of life's challenges is living with necessary honest doubt. In the words of the sermon by Father Flynn which opens the play: "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty." This view is anathema to Sister Aloysius who is convinced of the priest's guilt and seeks to have him removed from the school.
"It's a good cast, and I think it's relevant and timely," says Moore, adding that the players are all either teachers or underwent Catholic schooling, which gives them special insight into the play's issues. "We've all got different opinions, which I like. I think that helps the characters. We're thinking of having a post-show discussion to see what the audience thinks."
