MvB

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:18:10 -0800

Jeremy: I had seen Martin Moran's The Tricky Part last season, which does focus on the after-life of abuse, so here I was prepared to take Shanley's no-kids-allowed perspective as an intentionally limiting one. I think it works -- but it's not going to be "the" play on the issue because of what it leaves out.

d

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:05:52 -0800

Loved the play and disagree with Jeremy. I think we could all come up with ways the play could have been more inclusive, but what I was really struck by watching this play is how tightly written it is. It's intense and the minutes fly by. While adding children may have been more inclusive, I think intensity would have suffered. One of the reasons is a logistical one. Child actors stop a play dead in its tracks. In all my years of watching theatre, I have yet to see one where this didn't happen. Reading Shanley's program notes was interesting for me. I never questioned (doubted) that Sister Aloyius's suspicion was founded. It's not a trial; all things being equal the simplest explanation is the one to accept.

Jeremy M. Barker

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 11:01:37 -0800

Doubt is a good play, and the production and performances are strong, but it's also a bit didactic. Shanley is clearly going for the "how-do-you-know-who's-telling-the-truth" aspect of the priest-absuse scandal, and he labors to leave the audience seriously questioning who's right and who's wrong. That's, I think, the main reason we never actually see children in the play, and it's right to ask questions about that omission. Potentially abused children are not Godot, whose power and presence exist in absentia: they're the meat of the issue, and I think with a kid actually onstage, it could potentially sway the play away from the gray area Shanley aims for and push the audience to Sister Aloysius's side. I wasn't particularly put off by the fact that the potential victim was the first black student at the school, and (it's implied) a homosexual who's abused at home. Shanley gets the sort of child who makes an easy victim, and it's a very subtle commentary too on the fact that in real life, the court cases over priest abuse were complicated by the fact that such victims make for such easily dismissible accusers: Father Flynn points this out himself in the play when he suggests that Muller's home life is probably the cause of his strange behavior rather than unsubstantiated sexual abuse. So while it can seem like a stretch to include race and sexuality in the mix, I think it's actually fairly astute from a historical perspective. What troubles me is that Shanley dodges the actual issue of the consequences of priest-abuse. This play addresses the issue the same ay Schindler's List addressed the Holocaust: perfectly triangulated for the non-stakeholders to address the horror of the situation. In Schindler's List, we get the perspective of a simply selfish, non-ideological war profiteer who's forced to make tough decisions on humanitarian grounds, but for a movie about a list of Jewish names, there's actually only one main character who's Jewish; Spielberg made the film with a mind to having American outsiders see the conflict from a perspective they can understand and appreciate. Similarly Shanley writes a play that tries to convey to the audience how tough the situation really is. But in both cases there's a valid criticism to be made that the refusal to tell the story of the victim just further marginalizes an already marginalized person. They remain an object, something that things happen to but who has no real voice. Personally, I can see the value in that sort of drama, but I think better writers can achieve both ends simultaneously.

Seattlest: Habits Put Collars Down in Doubt

MvB

d

Jeremy M. Barker