Drama of conflict between nun and priest has no easy answers

Date Published: {J}

It’s best known as a film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but Doubt – A Parable started life as a stage play in 2004.

Now, a new production of the Pulitzer and Tony winning drama, about the conflict between a nun and a priest she suspects of child abuse, will be staged at the city’s Town Hall Theatre from February 21-25.

This Decadent Theatre production is being directed by Andrew Flynn who feels Doubt “is a better play than a film, because the film lost what the play had – which is doubt”. That’s because the film came down too hard on the priest with some of the scenes it showed, he adds.

“You don’t have those in the play. What you have is a fantastic courtroom drama that asks what do you do if you are in doubt, but have no proof that something is wrong.”

For this production Spiddal born actress Bríd Ní Neachtain, who is known mostly for her work with the Abbey Theatre, takes on the role of the conservative Sr Aloysius, while Diarmuid de Faoite, fresh from appearing in The Playboy of the Western World at London’s Old Vic, plays the younger, progressive Fr Flynn.

Sr Aloysius suspects that that Fr Flynn is inappropriately involved with a 12-year-old boy, but there are no easy answers in this play by John Patrick Shanley. The nun’s suspicion might be based on reality, but it might also be due to this conservative disciplinarian having an over active imagination.

“There is no proof and it’s left open for the audience,” says Andrew.

In the eight years since Doubt – A Parable was first staged at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2004, before transferring to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in 2005, “an awful lot has happened” in Irish society, Andrew observes.

“A priest in his robes used to be a symbol of massive respect, now it stirs up different feelings.

“But Doubt – A Parable is not a play about child abuse, it’s about if you can crucify someone without proof.”

He refers to the Guilford Four case in England in the 1980s and more recently to the controversial Prime Time Investigates, which falsely accused Galway based priest, Fr Kevin Reynolds of fathering a child in Africa.

“You could argue that the nun in the play takes a stance with no hard proof, just a hunch to go after the priest.”

The play is set in New York in 1964, just after the Second Vatican Council, which moved to modernise the Catholic Church and this too is an area of tension between Sr Aloysius and Fr Flynn.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.