Doubt
\nBy John Patrick Shanley<\/p>\n
State Theatre Company presents
\nThe Sydney Theatre Company
\nDunstan Playhouse.
\nSeptember 6. Until September 22, 2007<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
It has been a productive time for Adelaide theatre in recent weeks. At the Bakehouse, Vitalstatistix has staged an excellent production, directed by Catherine Fitzgerald, of Love, Patricia Cornelius\u2019s award-winning Australian play about a lovers\u2019 triangle plunging into addiction and youthful despair. And for young audiences, Windmill Productions has presented a charming home-grown version of the Swedish classic, The Little Gentleman, directed by Neill Gladwin and featuring Paul Blackwell, with delightful music and design by Fleur Green and Dean Hills. <\/p>\n
The State Theatre Company, currently celebrating its thirty-fifth year, has just won the 2007 Ruby award for \u201cSustained Contribution\u201d and, from the Hamlet earlier in the year to the two most recent productions, that contribution has been variously evident. Last month\u2019s Lion Pig Lion, a new work about individual and corporate ethics by Marty Denniss, despite able performances and diligent direction by Michael Hill, proved only a mixed success. But the company\u2019s mainstage support of new Australian work is commendable and a timely reminder that for theatre to flourish it has to chance its arm as well. <\/p>\n
State\u2019s latest presentation, the Sydney Theatre Company production of John Patrick Shanley\u2019s Doubt, not only gives Adelaide audiences a chance to see quality new writing but also the calibre of current work from the eastern states. On both counts, you might say, Doubt is a certainty. Shanley, who has had success with plays and screenplays such as Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Moonstruck, has excelled with Doubt, a carefully fashioned text which earned him a Pulitzer prize in 2005. <\/p>\n
Set in 1964, amidst the angst at the death of President Kennedy and hopes for liberalization in the Catholic Church with the recent Vatican II papal statements, Doubt takes place in a Bronx parochial school where a charismatic young priest, Father Flynn, is teaching alongside Sister James, an earnest and openhearted young nun eager to promote the new-found humanity in church teachings. <\/p>\n
Also, in this brave new world, is the stern and watchful principal, Sister Aloysius who runs her school with an iron discipline and a cool, but not uncaring, eye. She values dispassionate distance in her teachers. To Sister James she mordantly observes that satisfaction is a vice and innocence, a form of laziness. She seems to be the spoiler in her garden of Eden but Shanley writes her skepticism and rigour, not just sympathetically but paradoxically – as she challenges easy assertions and unsustained beliefs, she is herself also making them. When she suspects something improper in Flynn\u2019s private dealings with Robert Muller, the school\u2019s first black student, she must break with the usual lines of ecclesiastical command and challenge a man who has powerfully established his credentials not just as a virtuous man but as emblematic of the future of the church.<\/p>\n
Director Julian Meyrick has created a taut austerity in his production to match the finely tuned balances in the play. With Stephen Curtis\u2019s blank Hopper-like design of pulpit, courtyard, and garden (with retractable office) the cloister has an opaque, ambiguous aspect, accentuated by Matt Scott\u2019s often murky sprays of light. <\/p>\n
The performances, on the other hand, are lucid but equally unfathomable as each character is shown to be locked inside his or her own beliefs, prejudices and justifications. Kate Box convincingly captures the idealism and need for approval in Sister James and Christopher Gabardi is excellent as the assured, astute – but unknowable – priest.<\/p>\n
It is Jennifer Flowers as Aloysius who is especially memorable \u2013 pursuing her doubts with such dogged certainty. Even when thrown off kilter by the unexpectedly pragmatic response from Mrs Muller (Pamela Jikiemi) she continues her enquiries in a maze of mirrors. This is a well- judged production of an intriguing play which, in a crisp ninety minutes, covers a lot of territory, offers proofs of a kind, but never gratifies us with a definitive conclusion. <\/p>\n
\u201cUncertainty, suspicion and true belief \u201c The Adelaide Review, No.325, September 14, 2007, p.27. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Doubt By John Patrick Shanley State Theatre Company presents The Sydney Theatre Company Dunstan Playhouse. September 6. Until September 22, 2007 Reviewed by Murray Bramwell It has been a productive time for Adelaide theatre in recent weeks. At the Bakehouse, Vitalstatistix has staged an excellent production, directed by Catherine Fitzgerald, of Love, Patricia Cornelius\u2019s award-winning Australian play about a lovers\u2019 triangle plunging into addiction and youthful despair. And for young audiences, Windmill Productions has presented a charming home-grown version of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":957,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}