Doubt – A Parable

Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork

Played without an interval by a cast of four debating the profound implications of a controversial issue, Doubt – A Parableby John Patrick Shanley is presented with flair in this visually admirable co-production. The context is a time of change within the modern Catholic church; the location is a New York school where the principal, Sr Aloysius, is trying to maintain an ethic of discipline and hard work despite the new theories of community involvement personified in the pastor, Fr Flynn.

The complex antipathies of this pair concentrate on the nun’s suspicions of the priest’s motives in his friendliness towards one schoolboy. “Doubt” says Fr Flynn in a sermon, “can a be a bond as sustaining as certainty”, and in this case it seems to sustain the nun, and her young acolyte Sr James, in their case against the priest. Or does it? The question reverberates in the absorbing duels of accusation and recrimination which are left to the audience to resolve. They must do so, on this reading, without any shred of sympathy for the two antagonists, as neither Bríd Ní Neachtain’s tyrannical nun nor Diarmuid de Faoite’s indignant pastor quite hit the target, largely because they ignore the opportunities for defining phrasing or pauses in their tirades.

This is a big play in a small package, into which Shanley scatters motivational hints like cheese on a pizza: what are we to make of the priest’s long fingernails, the rose protected against the garden frost, the encroaching blindness of an old nun, and the impact of a winter storm? Or is the parable contained in the immutable supremacy of the male priesthood?

There’s a lot going on, and none of it is behind the scenes: directed by Andrew Flynn, this production – uniting Town Hall Theatre, Decadent Theatre Company and the Everyman Palace Theatre – washes its impressive set from Owen MacCárthaigh in indigo, grey and green (with lighting by Sinéad McKenna) where the scene-stealing set-changers march in orchestral patterns to Carl Kennedy’s terrific sound-track.

Runs until March 3rd, then tours nationally