Doubt– Amy Ryan, Zoe Kazan, Liev Schreiber (Photo: Joan Marcus)
In the small town I grew up in, there was a Catholic shrine and seminary, a novitiate for an order of nuns that got turned into a seminary, and a whole other novitiate for a different order of nuns. It is any wonder that when I was a child, I thought most of the world was Catholic.
This was all before the revelation of the sexual abuse scandals in the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002 that would include a priest at one of these local facilities and the beginning of the end for my local parishes.
I never managed to see John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play, Doubt: A Parable, or the 2008 film version that followed. Reviving it in 2024, it is hard to watch a play about maybe, potentially, unfounded suspicions around a priest’s behavior, with all we know now.
In Shanley’s play, set in 1964, the Vatican II church reforms are in the process of being put into place—discussions of connecting to the local community and encouraging music are part of the “radical” changes afoot.
No fan of reformations, Sister Aloysius (Amy Ryan who stepped in for Tyne Daly just as previews began) is the principal of the Catholic School. She oversees the eager, people-pleaser teacher, Sister James (Zoe Kazan). Sister Aloysius is concerned about the new student, Donald, who is the first Black student at the school and asks Sister James to be on the lookout for trouble.
She also inquires about Father Flynn (Liev Schreiber). Once Sister James is infected with Sister Aloysius’s suspicion, she brings to Sister Aloysius’ attention that Donald had a private meeting with Father Flynn and the 12-year-old boy had alcohol on his breath. Sister Aloysius then launches a plan to try to determine if Father Flynn has been behaving inappropriately.
While the play is designed to leave the audience questioning who is in the right and who is in the wrong as accusations fly and “evidence” is lacking, I found myself irritated by this guessing game. I have zero tolerance for any theatrical coyness around abuse. And a “debate” play around this topic left me queasy.
But the production did not do the play any favors either. Scott Ellis’s production has some heavy-handed music which plays over the shows final line undermining what should be a key moment for one character. The production felt like it weighed too heavily in one direction over the other. I kept finding the confrontations scenes to be off-balance throughout.
There was something oversimplified in this production that ground down some of the nuance to the play. While on the surface, there are supposed to be obvious contrasts (Sister Aloysius is rule-following and Father Flynn is a little unorthodox) underneath we are meant to sense more to each of them.
Yet, the way she is played, Amy Ryan’s Sister Aloysius is hard to read. Frustrating too is that Ryan is not the terrifying iron fist the principal is described as. She is cagey and calculating but almost too even-keeled. Her emotional intentions were frustratingly vague.
Worse, she never feels like an equal going head-to-head with the Father Flynn. Rather Ryan’s Aloysius is panicked and swimming upstream against something that was always going to drown her. That tips the balance of the play.
Further, Schreiber is an imposing man and uses his presence aggressively. His Father Flynn is a skosh condescending and not a little scary, actually. Even through his tears, he wants so much for us to dislike Sister Aloysius, doubt her, and malign her. There’s an easy misogyny to his criticisms of her hidden in his more “tolerant,” “loving” perspective of a more progressive church. Frankly, his cajoling of Sister James to see this point of view feels a bit like grooming.
Or are we supposed to be charmed by him and his pleas for understanding? The production drifted in that direction and left me ill-at-ease in its choice.
Rather than engaging in this abuse debate, I found myself thinking about this gendered power struggle between them. That certainly provided more interesting fodder.
One of the reasons Sister Aloysius must be furtive about her “investigation” of Father Flynn is that she is not in a position of authority over him. The priests govern their own (even if her students are at risk). She is also acutely aware that the priests will just get moved on. She says:
“8 years ago at St. Boniface we had a priest who had to be stopped. But I had Monsignor Scully then…whom I could rely on. Here. There’s no man I can go to, and men run everything. We are going to have to stop him ourselves.”
One might take her initiative as overstep but that is actually the point. She knows she is structurally disempowered and is still trying to navigate this web designed to prevent her from acting to stop him.
Meanwhile, she is trying to do this while still respecting the rules of engagement she is supposed to live by (she cannot even meet with him without a third-party present because a nun is not to be alone with a priest).
Her entire “crusade” against him comes at a great cost to her. But Father Flynn also relies on this and uses it against her. He says:
“You have no right to act on your own! You are a member of a religious order. You have taken vows, obedience being one! You answer to us! You have no right to step outside the church!”
He tars her with acting inappropriately within the hierarchy. Clubbing her with that power reveals more about his character than anything else he does. His love and tolerance evaporate in demands of obedience.
The newer, friendlier, reformed Catholic church still protecting the institution and the men within it above all.