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February 19, 2006
I have ... doubt!
I found myself in Times Square yesterday at 3PM, when the TKTS discount theater ticket window opens. Ordinarily tourists queue for hours to get 50%-off tickets, but there is a little-known “sixth window” for plays that has no queue.
We ended-up at Doubt, the 2005 Tony winner for Best Play, along with three other Tonys. Columbia also gave Doubt a Pulitzer for Best Drama. Doubt is a four-person drama of an old-fashioned Bronx Catholic School principal/nun who suspects the Father who coaches basketball of indiscretions with an altar boy. I won’t even try to summarize the plot and the point of the show; Martin Denton has a fine review. Bottom line, though, is that Doubt is a hit for the right reasons: a witty script and excellent acting, not because of expensive special effects.
Theatre buffs will not like me for saying this, but it’s particularly enjoyable to see these big-name actors in person on the stage. Ron Eldard (Death of a Salesman, House of Sand and Fog) has a particularly memorable and captivating voice, much like seeing John Lithgow in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Tiffany immediately recognized Jena Malone, and I suppose I would have recognized Eileen Atkins if I had watched her star in Cold Mountain and Gosford Park. The most emotional performance, however, was the single scene involving Adriane Lenox, which won her a Tony. Lenox plays the mother of the African-American altar boy who confronts Eileen Atkins’s character, revealing a depth of the situation that went far beyond what we would have imagined.
In today's society, most everyone knows someone involved in sexual abuse of some sort. Eileen Atkins’s character almost reminded me of my own grandmother suspecting her parish priest, who was recently defrocked for improper sexual relationships. (Grandma didn’t have anything to do with the Father getting defrocked.) But Doubt is not about diddling priests. It is a question of the role of the emotion called doubt, of whether doubt can stop us from doing the right thing, or whether to listen to our doubts is to do the right thing.
By the way, Alex, for old times’ sake, we went and had a drink with the lounge lizards at the Living Room after the show. The regulars are wondering why you haven’t been there in such a long time.
N.B. The picture has Brían O'Byrne as “Father Flynn” and Cherry Jones as “Sister Aloysius”
Posted by adrianjo at February 19, 2006 03:45 PM