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by John Patrick Shanley, directed by Marti Maraden

Canadian Stage Company, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

May 7-30, 2009

The Canadian Stage Company ends its 2008-09 season on a high note with Doubt, a Parable, far and away its strongest show of the season.  John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play, a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, is an old-fashioned well-made play, but unlike so many Broadway plays, it provides no tidy ending or take-home moral.  It is a parable about doubt in the broadest sense, including loss of faith, and cleverly leads the audience question the motives of both major characters by the end.  Seana McKenna and David Storch triumph in roles quite unlike those they usually play.

Set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, Doubt pits the school’s principal Sister Aloysius (McKenna) against the popular priest Father Flynn (Storch) in a struggle for dominance.  It is a battle of conservative against liberal in which no one wins.  Sister Aloysius is convinced that Flynn has “interfered with” or is planning to interfere with 12-year-old Donald Muller, the only black student in the school.  With no clear evidence but her unshakeable certainty she is right, Sister Aloysius wants Flynn cast out of the school and will go to any lengths to achieve her goal in the morally dubious notion that the ends justify the means.  Her paradox is that as a stickler for rules and order, she has to disobey the church laws of obedience that make Flynn her superior.             

Never before has McKenna played a human being, so cold and so drained of emotion.  Her sole focus on enforcing rules and discipline has totally occluded the virtues of compassion and mercy.  Yet, Mckenna makes us sense an underlying desperation in Sister Aloysius, who clings to the old ways because the world is changing around her.  Storch, in one of his best performances in years, completely suppresses his comedic side and in so doing gives us the impression of a devout man who believes that the Church needs openness not sternness to survive and yet seems to harbour a secret.  Daniela Vlaskalic, rather over-emphatically, plays Sister James, a stand-in for the audience, an innocent torn between the claims of the nun and the priest.  Raven Dauda is very strong as Mrs. Muller, who won’t let herself be cowed by Sister Aloysius.  Marti Maraden directs all four actors to keep their emotions so pent up that every scene is infused with tension and ambiguity.  You will find yourself debating what did or did not happen long after you leave the theatre.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-05-11.

Photo: Seana McKenna and David Storch.