Review Doubt, A Parable

A fraught adversarial situation between nun and priest within a New York Catholic school during a time of social change fully engages Peter Barker. 

Doubt, A Parable
by John Patrick Shanley 

Truth And Consequences
http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/

Sister Aloysius Beavier is the sternly upright conservative headmistress of a New York Roman Catholic school in 1964 which has just accepted its first black pupil from the working class population of the Bronx.

Now purely circumstantial evidence leads her  to suspect a young, progressive priest with an otherwise attractive personality, Father Brendan O'Flynn, may be guilty of molesting the new boy.

John Patrick Shanley's play tackles the nature of faith in oneself as well as in others and in self-policing, hierarchical institutions.

Doubt swirls around the allegations, but Sister Aloysius, the principal of a school attached to the local Catholic Church, does not allow herself to entertain any uncertainty.

She sets out to prove his guilt, not so much Miss Marple as a Miss Wimple who has already drawn her conclusions and now is working backwards to find the proof.

She's a small but steely and tenacious figure against the taller frame of the urbane Father Flynn, marking the division between the two not only in personality but in a hierachy.

For the priest always outranks the nun and the protocols for handling discomforting complaints easily turn into a dead end process and a means of suppression.

Both a melodrama and a witty thriller mystery, writer John Patrick Shanley's 2005 play therefore pits the austere female principal, played by Stella Gonet, against Jonathan Chamber's charismatic priest.

Doubt is a four-hander play with three women and one man structured around a series of duologue scenes punctuated by monologues, among which are sermons delivered to a congregation.

It's a tense 90 minutes revealing unexpected but all-too-human complications and the atmosphere of an era - the USA's first Catholic president John F Kennedy had just been assassinated.

Even the title Doubt, A Parable has an ironic 21st century ambivalent edge - for when was a parable ever uncertain? -  as nun and priest battle it out verbally and manoeuvre on the stained glass floor under the chandelier of PJ McEvoy's ecclesiastical set design.

Directed by Ché Walker, there are terrific performances from the whole cast which also includes Clare Latham as the idealistic, enthusiastic young teacher Sister James and Jo Martin's mother of the alleged victim who has her own understandable reasons for not making waves. 

Doubt is a tautly constructed play where no character has the monopoly on probity and the Catholic Church's powerful reach brings unexpected but logical reactions when religion becomes a team game.

This is highlighted in a compelling scene between Sister Aloysius and the mother of the allegedly abused boy who, focussed on a better life for her son, is willing to accept some risk as long as the boy benefits.

However, this is a production that falls at the very last hurdle. Instead of leaving the question of the priest's guilt or innocence open, it seems to interpret a final ruse by the nun followed by the priest conceding to her as an indication there is no room for doubt.

The actors play this as a cut-and-dry situation and this ending jars, given the complexities of the situation presented beforehand. Nevertheless for everything else in a demanding, pacey and thought provoking play, it's a green light. 

Review Twilight Song

Twilight Song
by Kevin Elyot

Ah! Sweet Mystery Of Life
https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/

Twilight Song, written by the late Kevin Elyot in 2014 just before his death, is an odd little playwriting confection about some odd fellows and a woman. 

Analyse it closely and it turns out to be a tawdry tale of impregnation, loans, property, possible professional fraud, furtive sexual encounters, time slippages and blackmail, all wrapped  in colourful tissue paper and tied with a great big ribbon bow.

We can't begin to add up all the self-consciously theatrical and cinematic styles it seems to go through - there's a touch of Rattigan, definitely some Noel Coward and Alfred Hitchcock, even a snippet of Christopher Isherwood, Charles Dickens and DH Lawrence (or is it EM Foster ...?) and, hey, is that Monty Python parody?

This is the première of Elyot's last play and, despite some sluggish moments, director Anthony Banks gives us a stylish production set on James Cotterill's wooden round stage living room with a settee, curved French windows, mahogany gramophone and a silver drinks' trolley to create a Scotch haze. 

It's a slickly, but rather mechanically, put together play and it rather feels as if the playwright put together the themes going around  rather than a deeply-felt piece. 

Maybe it was intended to go a bit deeper into the gay influence on literature, film and television and what this meant before and after 1967 legislation, yet this never really develops, even in metaphor.  

Still, after a slow and rather stilted beginning, the story does take hold. Barry (Paul Higgins) is a middle-aged gay retired pharmacist who lives with his mother in a North London Victorian villa. While she takes her regular weekly trip to Kent, he invites an estate agent (Adam Garcia) to give a valuation and other services. 

Centred on the house, this modern day encounter slips back to the 1960s and delicate girlish bride Isabella (Bryony Hannah) welcoming two old codgers into her marital home. 

Charles (Hugh Ross), an elderly doctor and seemingly someone's uncle. Harry (Philip Bretherton), a dodgy married solicitor, like Charles, seems well lodged in his current comfortable middle-class existence even if it seems the two men have a past. 

Slipping back and forth in time, by the end we can piece together the story and obtain a sense of an ending but, while it may have been meant as a satire or parody, it comes across as a rather lacklustre playwriting effort.

References to Conservative but pro Welfare State prime minister MacMillan and 1960s emigration to Australia are flagged up as well as a wife's thwarted career.

However, in the end it feels as if we've been lured to spy through the keyhole at a rather insubstantial and too self-satisfied mystery story and it's an amber light.