"A superb new drama written by John Patrick Shanley. It is an inspired study in moral uncertainty with the compellingly certain structure of an old-fashioned detective drama. Even as Doubt holds your conscious attention as an intelligently measured debate play, it sends off stealth charges that go deeper emotionally. One of the year's ten best."-Ben Brantley, The New York Times
"[The] #1 show of the year. How splendid it feels to be trusted with such passionate, exquisite ambiguity unlike anything we have seen from this prolific playwright so far. Blunt yet subtle, manipulative but full of empathy for all sides, the play is set in 1964 but could not be more timely. Doubt is a lean, potent drama . . . passionate, exquisite, important, and engrossing."-Linda Winer, Newsday
Chosen as the best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines, Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a strong-minded woman wrestles with conscience and uncertainty as she is faced with concerns about one of her male colleagues. This new play by John Patrick Shanley-the Bronx-born-and-bred playwright and Academy Award-winning author of Moonstruck-dramatizes issues straight from today's headlines within a world re-created with knowing detail and a judicious eye. After a stunning, sold-out production at Manhattan Theatre Club, the play has transferred to Broadway.
John Patrick Shanley is the author of numerous plays, including Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Dirty Story, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis, Sailor's Song, Savage in Limbo, and Where's My Money?. He has written extensively for TV and film, and his credits include the teleplay for Live from Baghdad and screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano (which he also directed), and Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for original screenplay.
Geishas Revisited I have ordered several items from Amazon recently and your request for review does not state which one you are referring to. I assume that it is for "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden.
We recently returned from a trip to Japan, where we heard about the lives of modern geishas and actually met one too. I was fascinated by the book and could not put it down. The cultural differences among our Countries are incredible. Imagine men bidding for the virginity of a young geisha. But don't think about them as prostitutes. There are subtle but very important differences. Rather compare them with a young woman - in our Country - who marries a 70 year old... Isn't that a "kept woman"?
But there is much more to be learned than sexual habits. I strongly recommend this book. It is at least very entertaining. But also very informative.
Marika Frankl
Thought-provoking... This is an amazing play. It is very well-written, and the character-driven plot is difficult to tear yourself away from. Even though at times it is somewhat ambiguous, I thoroughly enjoyed this play and would gladly recommend it. I can't wait for the film to come out - Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep are perfectly cast in my opinion.
"What do you do when you're not sure?" I saw "Doubt" this weekend down in the Twin Cities. While you are more likely to see a national touring company of a Tony Award winning musical, such as "The Light in the Piazza" (which we will see in a couple of weeks), Tony Award winning dramas do make it out to the hinterlands from time to time. What was rare was that the cast was headed by Cherry Jones, who won her second Tony Award for originating the role of Sister Aloysius on Broadway. Usually you have to go to New York City to see the stars in the show (or maybe Los Angeles, which is where I saw Michael Crawford do "Phantom"), so this was a real treat. The draw might have been an award-winning actress, but by the end of the performance the star is John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize winning play.
"Doubt: A Parable" is set in a parochial school in the Bronx in the Autumn of 1964 and begins with a homily by Father Flynn that questions the role of doubt in the modern world and sets the stage for the drama. The priest asks the audience, "What do you do when you're not sure?" Then Sister Aloysius, the principal of the school, has a meeting in her office with young Sister James, who is warned about being too passionate about teaching history to her students in general and in particular not to turn FDR into a secular saint. Sister Aloysius is not a sympathetic figure, especially given that our introduction to the nun is to watch her crush the joy of teaching out of a young teacher. However, then she makes Sister James aware that she has concerns for a new student, Donald Mueller, the school's first black child. Her concern is not because of the boy's race, but because she suspects Flynn has been "interfering" with the boy.
Distance makes it difficult to remember the times, but an undercurrent of the play is how Sister Aloysius is strictly old school while Father Flynn has embraced the directives of the Second Vatican Council to make the clergy more accessible to their parish and become like "members of their family." Shanley does not get into deep theological issues but finds a telling point of contention in Sister Aloysius' dismissal of the song "Frosty the Snowman" as an example of paganism. Yet despite our lack of agreement with her strict conservatism, it is impossible not to be concerned about Sister Aloysisus' suspicions regarding the charismatic young priest who likes his fingernails to be slightly long.
I have a background in competitive debate so one of the things I appreciated in Shanley's drama is how he balances the two sides to create the requisite titular state. When I was dissecting the play with my wife on the way home from the theater I discovered that while I (male Italian raised Lutheran) was looking at the play from the assumption of the priest's innocence, she (female Irish raised Catholic) was assuming he was guilty. Of course the play works both ways, but certainly there have been more than enough headlines about stories of abuse in the Catholic Church in the past decade to make it easier for the play's audience to jump to the same conclusion as Sister Aloysius.
Coming to a decision as to the "truth" of what happened between Father Flynn and the young boy is a question of when you decide to place your bet on who to believe. Sister Aloysius begins the play with her suspicions and moves towards certainty on her own timetable. Sister James serves as a warning not to decide too early, but Shanley clearly wants us to come to our own decisions before the drama's "resolution." Waiting until you are sure is to repeat Hamlet's tragic error, which is not to say that Sister Aloysius is the Dane's opposite because she is not guilty of the proverbial rush to judgment. The term "reasonable doubt" is never used in the play, but it certainly comes into play as the nun commits to certainty in advance of having absolute proof, mainly because being denied such proof cannot, in her mind at least, preclude action. Sister Aloysius wants to know what really happened between Father Flynn and Donald, even if the boy's mother is willing to turn a blind eye.
For me the point at which Sister Aloysius becomes heroic is when Father Flynn threatens her for her refusal to follow Church protocols. He seeks to convince her that she has no choice, because failure to obey would basically send her to Hell for disobedience. But she sees herself in the same danger if she falls to do what she can to save one of her children, and in her decision to damn herself for the right reason and his decision to coerce rather than persuade is where my doubts were erased. For me the most delicious irony is the way Sister Aloysius' crucial phone call mirrors Father Flynn's point earlier in the play about the value of true stories. The final line of the play is also dripping with irony in a very conscious effort by Shanley to leave his audience exactly as he wants them to be.
One of the best play I have ever read... I knew the basic idea behind this show when I ordered it but I didn't expect anything this powerful. When I finished it I just sat it down and said "Wow". Without a doubt this is one of the most powerful plays I have ever read. The Father's monologue on gossip just blew me away. This show is written for an African American woman to play one of the parts. I think you can tweak the show so you can play it with a non-African American in the role but I never like the idea of messing with a play like that. I know that sounds terrible but it is a reality in the theater that I work in. We are in a rural area and simply never have actors of any non-white ethnicity come out for shows. It's just a sad fact of where we live. This show is simply fabulous and I would love to direct it.
Doubt - A Parable (?) Doubt is a superb piece of theater. Shanley is one of America's top playwrights and screen writers; and he does his best work since "Moonstruck." The play is, in my opinion, NOT a parable. The ending is questionable and the message is murky.
Don't let that discourage you. The play and the book will give you more for your money than you will find anywhere else this season.
The philosophy you'll find in the book and playbill. The drama you'll find at the play.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tony's Online Tips
Trevor
