'Doubt: A Parable' is just that

When Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" in 1953, a play set in Salem, Mass., during trials and executions of women suspected of being witches, he wasn’t really writing about the Salem witch trials. He was writing about Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt for American communists and its resulting hysteria. Miller was a McCarthy victim.

John Patrick Shanley’s play, "Doubt: A Parable," the full title of which was unfortunately chopped to "Doubt" on the program’s cover, is set in a Catholic school, the fictitious St. Nicholas School in the Bronx, New York, in 1964. The plot concerns the conflict between the eccentric and rigid principal, Sister Aloysius Bouvier (Greta Lambert) and the young, progressive assistant pastor, Father Brendan Flynn (Jeff Talbot), whom Sr. Aloysius is certain, but without proof, is abusing the school’s newest and its only African-American student (who is never seen on stage).

The clergy sex abuse scandal is a tragic and shameful time in the Catholic Church’s history. It leaves us with a legacy of pain that will not heal easily, and for some, particularly its victims, it may never heal. But "Doubt: A Parable" is a lot like "The Crucible." It’s about something bigger and even more painful than the clergy sex abuse scandal, if that can be imagined.

Lambert’s Sr. Aloysius is utterly convinced Fr. Flynn is guilty of abusing the student. She is beyond listening to the more reasoned but less experienced voice of Shannon Koob’s Sister James. After all, Sr. James saw the priest take the boy into the rectory, and the boy did return to class with the smell of alcohol on his breath. Sr. Aloysius goes to war with the priest.

There is no listening to Fr. Flynn’s side; that he found the boy sneaking drinks of altar wine, and took him into the rectory to counsel him. Fr. Flynn says he learned from the boy what is driving him to drink and is hoping to save the boy’s position as an altar boy.

In her unbridled conviction that she is right, Fr. Flynn is lying, and Sr. James is just naïve and silly, Sr. Aloysius insists not only that the boy be taken off the altar (for drinking) but that Fr. Flynn confess and resign.

Sr. Aloysius even appeals to the boy’s mother, Mrs. Muller (Tamela Aldridge), who knows her son’s problems and sees what is happening at home as far more dangerous than anything that can happen to him at school or church. Muller’s love for her son butts up against St. Aloyisius’ drive to bring Fr. Flynn down, and it’s the boy, forced off the altar and facing the loss of his only trusted friend, Fr. Flynn, who really loses.

Is Fr. Flynn a clergy pedophile? I don’t know. The play’s director, Martin Platt, who also directed this Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play in its English production in Vienna, Austria, said in an interview with the Intermountain Catholic even he doesn’t know if Fr. Flynn is guilty. "Only the actor who plays Fr. Flynn knows, and he determines that in the development of his character. But I don’t know."

Talbot’s Fr. Flynn is strong and compassionate. He tries to reason with Sr. Aloysius, but he knows he’s not her match. He takes notes to catch the thoughts that eventually become his powerful homilies (one of which, on gossip, we all should remember), but also to defend himself against Sr. Aloysius’ accusations.

This one-act play, though a dark drama, has some humorous moments, especially in its first half, in which we really get to know the eccentricities of Sr. Aloysius. But on opening night, the humor was forced, so forced that Lambert’s Sr. Aloysius moved from real and eccentric to unreal caricature, which is unfortunate because it deflates any credibility Sr. Aloysius has. I was disappointed in this because making Sr. Aloysius less than real gives the play, a parable, a distinctly anti-Catholic feel to it. Some will see the forced humor as Catholic-bashing. The humor here must be handled very carefully.

Sr. Aloysius’ rigidity is best understood in her scene with Aldridge’s Mrs. Muller. The tormented mother, wonderfully played, tries to share her very real pain and her son’s very real pain with Sr. Aloysius, but Sr. Aloysius won’t listen. Interested only in making her point, Sr. Aloysius is cold, unresponsive, obsessed, and alienating. She has made herself her students’ gatekeeper, and even their well-being is not as important as her role as all-knowing protector.

The play has a riveting ending which I will not reveal here, but it is powerful, and it hints there may be hope for Sr. Aloysius and her students yet.

"Doubt: A Parable," is just that – a parable. In the biblical tradition, its characters are not real, and its story is many-layered and more profound than it’s obvious message.

I agree with Platt when he says "Doubt: A Parable" is not a one-act play. Its second act consists of the dialogue it prompts among its audience as we leave the theater, analyzing what we’ve seen.

Can you think of a real-life person who is so utterly convinced he sees danger that he has literally gone to war and taken others with him? Can you think of someone who has sacrificed the well-being of young people, and taken advantage of a system that he claims doesn’t recognize that he, and he alone, know what is best? I can think of one.