Review: With fine acting, direction and story, 'Doubt' needs no resolution
BY BOB FISCHBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
The brilliant thing about "Doubt," John Patrick Shanley's best-play Tony and Pulitzer winner set in the Bronx in 1964, is that it leaves it audience nothing to be sure about.
Not about Sister Aloysius, the principal who runs St. Nicholas Elementary School with an iron ruler.
Information: 341-2757 Not about Father Flynn, who Sister Aloysius believes is molesting Donald Muller, the school's only black student.
Not about Donald's mother, who wants to protect him from her physically abusive husband and the boy's cruel schoolmates.
Not even about young Sister James, a teacher caught between her admiration of the progressive Father Flynn and obedience to her superior, Sister Aloysius.
But one certainty is that SNAP Productions' staging of "Doubt," which opened Friday, is a crackerjack production overflowing with fine acting under the capable direction of M. Michele Phillips.
Those who saw the Brigit St. Brigit Theatre's version a year ago will - no doubt - make some interesting comparisons, though both are laudable. The Brigit inserted an intermission and had breathing space between audience and cast. SNAP had no intermission, as was done on Broadway, and added seats to the front of the 55-seat full house Friday.
That left little room for undetected artifice. Phillips wisely keeps a tight lid on this pressure cooker.
As Sister Aloysius, Judy Radcliff is a hard-as-nails force to be reckoned with as she manipulates and intimidates each of the play's other characters in pursuit of her goal: to remove Father Flynn. She seems cold, nearly humorless and incessantly angry - right up to the final moments, when cracks finally appear in Mount Rushmore. Her shrewdness, ferocity and conviction leave the audience more likely to believe than to admire her.
"I know people," she says when Sister James presses her as to why she is so sure of Father Flynn's guilt.
Scott Working, as Father Flynn, seemed to literally sweat on cue Friday as the nun pressed her case, though layers of clerical garb may have helped his convincing fretfulness. Working plays it down the middle, dropping subtle hints of both innocence and guilt along the way.
"Children need warmth, kindness, understanding," he tells Sister James in explaining his attention to Donald. Cruel people, he warns, have always killed kindness in the name of virtue.
Colleen O'Doherty is pitch-perfect as sweet-faced Sister James, never better than when she tearfully reveals that Sister Aloysius has robbed her of her joy for teaching. Veteran Echelle Childers gives one of her most impressive turns yet as a mother who finds herself in an impossible position.
The issues at stake mount up: innocence and guilt, race, sexual and domestic abuse, change in the church, faith in God and in oneself, gender politics, slander, abuse of power.
That's quite a list, and Shanley smartly leavened his heavyweight script with crackling humor as well.
But as the Brigit's did, SNAP's approach will leave its audience divided about what really happened. No doubt that's just what Shanley intended.
Theatre Review: No 'Doubt' about show's strong performances
Loyal Fairman
08/28/2008
Email to a friendPost a CommentPrinter-friendly
OMAHA - SNAP! Productions has opened an award-winning drama that features strong performances from a cast of four talented actors.
Advertisement
Theatre Review: No 'Doubt' about show's strong performances
Loyal Fairman
08/28/2008
"Doubt : A Parable," a Pulitzer, Tony and Obie award-winning play by John Patrick Shanley, opened last Thursday at the SNAP/Shelterbelt Theatre at 37th and California streets in Omaha.
M. Michelle Phillips directs this play dealing with the Catholic Church, nuns, priests and the doubt we all face in life. She has done a good job of bringing this story to life on the stage of SNAP.
Judy Radcliff is Sister Aloysius, a nun from the old school with a stern attitude about how St. Nicholas school and church should be run. There is no doubt that you know she is there for the good of the students. She is strict and brings to mind nuns of the past. The play takes place in 1964, a time when nuns wore habits and could be very strict. I am sure the Catholics in attendance Saturday night remembered some nuns from their past when watching Sister Aloysius on stage. Watching Judy perform in this part is rewarding to watch. She is great, and if she would have told the audience to sit up straight, 55 people would have done that immediately.
Scott Working plays Father Flynn, who you love from the opening monologue of a sermon he delivers to the parishioners. The sermon is about doubt and the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Father Flynn is also the boy's basketball coach and the audience becomes his team as he gives his team a pep talk. Scott delivers an excellent performance as the priest who we love but discover holds a secret.
Colleen O'Doherty, a University of Nebraska-Omaha student, plays a naïve young Sister James. She is always looking for the good in people. She is very good in the part. She, too, is faced with doubt about some things and tries to believe in Father Flynn.
Echelle Childers rounds out this talented group of actors. She portrays the mother of a black student who is brought in by Sister Aloysius to talk to her about her son. The story takes place when the civil rights movement was in its prime.
This play is very emotional but does feature some lighthearted moments mainly because the characters are very real. I won't tell you what Flynn's secret is and how Sister Aloysius deals with the situation.
The play is performed in one hour and 25 minutes with no intermission.
Paul Pape has a very interesting set that might have to be mowed before the end of the run. Brian Callahan stage manages, Jennifer Gilg is the producer, Phillips and Mark Cramer have done the sound design. Homero Vela is the light designer and Connie Fowler is the props person. Lindsay Pape is the costume designer. This is a very good production and worthy of your attention.
The play runs Thursday through Saturday nights at 8 and Sundays at 6 p.m., with the exception Sept. 14, when the curtain is at 2 p.m. The box office can be reached at (402) 341-2757. Ticket prices are $15 for adults and $12 for seniors, students and TAG members.
©SW Iowa News 2008
Set maker and costumer welcome opportunities to coordinate their efforts
BY BOB FISCHBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
 |
Paul Pape and his wife, Lindsay, met at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1998, when Lindsay designed costumes and Paul the set for "All in the Timing."
|
Theatrical design brought them together in the first place, and spouses Paul and Lindsay Pape continue to find projects they can approach as a design team.
Their latest, the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning drama "Doubt: A Parable," opens tonight at the SNAP/Shelterbelt Theatre. John Patrick Shanley's play, set in the 1960s, finds an old-school nun accusing a progressive young priest of molesting the only black student at a school where she is principal.
Lindsay designed the costumes, and Paul the set.
"We work well together," said Paul, who got the initial call from SNAP Productions. "So I said, 'If you guys are interested in a costume designer, I know a really good one.' They liked that idea of having a design team."
Pape said he and his wife bounce ideas off each other, making the design concept for the show more unified and complete.
"That helps with getting a show across," he said. "It's great to talk through a design with somebody who gets what you're doing."
Lindsay said design conversations often come up while they're driving somewhere.
"We can talk about the show as a whole," she said. "He doesn't have to make decisions in a microcosm. It's good to have someone to say, 'No, don't do that.' Or the opposite."
Usually the former, Paul joked. While his forte is spatial concepts, hers is structure and organization.
"Our skill sets mesh really well," he said. "If we did the same thing, I don't think we could live together. But we're a great support system for each other."
They met at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1998, when Lindsay designed costumes and Paul the set for "All in the Timing." The show won the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival regionals and played in Washington, D.C.
Both acted in high school productions, she at Millard South and he at Northwest. He earned a bachelor's degree at UNO and a master's in scenic design at the University of California at San Diego. She graduated in theater and art from Cornell College in Iowa and, after a year at UNO, earned her master's in fine arts from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. They wed in 2002, just after completing their higher degrees. Last year, son Alexander was born.
Paul designed sets, ran the scene shop and taught three years at UNO before a back injury caused him to ramp up an online design business. He makes custom Mii figurines for fans of Nintendo Wii and makes wedding-cake toppers. He also sells a line of pop-out paper miniature furniture for use by people who make scale models. He works out of the couple's home in south Bellevue, tackling industrial design jobs as well as stage work.
Lindsay is head of costumes for theater and dance at Creighton University, where she also teaches. Last year the pair designed the university's production of "Love's Labour's Lost." She freelances costume design for two or three additional shows each season, such as "A Servant to Two Masters" at Bellevue Little Theatre in 2007.
Her Sisters of Charity costumes for the SNAP/Shelterbelt production of "Doubt" will have a more traditional look than those used in last season's production at the Brigit St. Brigit Theatre. His set will include a giant wooden cross set into the floor, surrounded by cobblestone, sod and other natural materials.
"There are no walls in this set," he said. "Everything the characters do is seen by others, so the scenery will reinforce the play's sense of transparency."
Doubt: A Parable-
Get your tickets early for this one
By: David Williams
Issue: Synth City-Omaha City Weekly
 “What do you do when you’re not sure,” Father Flynn sermonizes from his lectern in the first line of “Doubt: A Parable,” which opens next week at the Shelterbelt Theatre as SNAP Productions’ first show of the new season.
Doubt will surely permeate the post card-sized stage at 33rd and California streets in John Patrick Shanley’s prize-winning play about rumored sexual abuse in a Catholic school in 1960s Baltimore, but there is little doubt about one thing – get your tickets early for this one.
Just two weeks ago, SNAP won 60 percent of the Theatre Arts Guild Awards for last season and swept the big three best show honors with “The Little Dog Laughed” (comedy), “Zanna Don’t” (musical) and “Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika” (drama).
And “Angels in America” best director trophy-winner M. Michelle Phillips is again at the helm backed by an all-star cast of Scott Working (the charismatic Father Flynn), Judy Radcliff (the draconian Sister Aloysius), Echelle Childers (a mother who is conflicted about her schoolboy son in more ways that one) and Colleen O’Doherty (the torn Sister James).
Then there’s a nod to the fact that “Doubt: A Parable” hit for the cycle in 2005 with an orgy of wins in the Pulitzer-Tony-Drama Desk-New York Drama Critics Circle camp.
Add to all the above the fact that the Shelterbelt seats less than 50 in most configurations and we have a formula for disaster when it comes to clogging up the reservation line.
“It doesn’t matter, really, that it is about priests and nuns during a time of great change in the Catholic Church back in the early ‘60s,” Phillips said. “It’s just such a universal play in so many ways,” she said of the attraction of a play that grabbed her by the nape of the neck in a script selection committee meeting.
The Bronx’s St. Nicholas Church School, circa 1964, is the setting for “Doubt.” The tide of progressive change that culminated in The Second Vatican Council goes against every grain in the body of Sister Aloysius and she butts heads with Father Flynn at every turn. Could it really be that he is a predator priest, or is Sister merely using any means necessary to turn back the clock?
Judy Radcliff goes from playing the vivacious Bloody Mary in the Omaha Community Playhouse production of “South Pacific” to the buttoned up Sister Aloysius, who is gunning for the young, progressive priest that represents, to her, all that is wrong with the new church.
“She’s just misunderstood,” Radcliff chuckled when describing her character, the old-school nun whose intentions and loyalties are always in doubt. “It’s an incredible role. At her core, even as unapproachable as she is, Sister Aloysius has a very noble, human motive. She wants to protect her students.”
Sister Aloysius’ nemesis, Father Flynn, is a bit of an enigma himself, explained Working.
“He’s this incredibly kind, charismatic leader and role model. You can tell he loves his congregation and is a shepherd in the truest sense of the word,” said Working.
“Or is he a wolf in sheep’s clothing? You’ll have to decide for yourself.”
Cold Cream
Warren Francke
thereader.com.
22 Aug 2008 *
Doubt: A Parable won a Pulitzer Prize on Broadway and it may win an award nomination here for Judy Radcliffe in the role of Sister Aloysius. That’s a safe prediction for at least three reasons.
First, it’s a SNAP! Production and that company usually dominates the Theatre Arts Guild awards. Second, it’s a choice role played last season at Brigit Saint Brigit by Cathy Kurz, who deserved recognition usually denied Brigit talents by TAG voters.
But, most importantly, because Radcliffe is simply one of Omaha’s most versatile character actors, whether playing a breezy comedic role in Always, Patsy Kline or a mock-villain like Mrs. Hannigan in Annie or a seriously complex nun in this case. It’s also inviting to anticipate Scott Working as Father Flynn, the priest she accuses of abusing young boys.
It’s his behavior and her charges that give us the title doubts. Michelle Phillips directs a cast that includes Colleen Dougherty as the more sympathetic Sister James, and Echelle Childers as the mother of an African-American student.
It opens Thursday, Aug. 21, in a benefit for the TAG scholarship fund. Performances continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 6 p.m. Sundays at the SNAP/Shelterbelt Theatre, 3225 California. Tickets are $15, $12 for students, seniors and TAG members. Call 402.341.2757 for reservations.
|
