By Channing Gray
Providence Journal [Pawtucket RI]
March 18, 2007
http://www.projo.com/theater/content/artsun-sin__03-18-07_VM4RA9V.cc82f9.html
When the play Sin: A Cardinal Deposed opened in the Boston area in the spring of 2004, it was announced that a talk-back session would take place after the performance.
No one left the theater. Sin, which deals with the molestation scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in Boston, had come home to roost.
Now it comes to Rhode Island, starting previews this week at Pawtucket's Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre.
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In the tradition of such docudramas as The Laramie Project and Anna Deavere Smith's take on the Crown Heights riots, playwright Michael Murphy has boiled down 1,000 pages of testimony taken from depositions of former Boston Cardinal Bernard F. Law. The show also features letters from the mothers of abuse victims and other material taken from church files.
Sin elicited an almost visceral response when it came to Boston. It promises to have a similar affect in Rhode Island, which saw its own share of scandal.
"These are people in our own backyard," said Gamm artistic director Tony Estrella, "not someone from across the country we've never heard about.
"I'm sure that a lot of the audience, if not all of the audience, will be one or two degrees shy of being indirectly, and in some cases directly, connected to many of these cases."
Sin takes place in 2002, when Cardinal Law, who will be played in the Gamm production by Sam Babbitt, was twice interviewed by lawyers in the Suffolk County Courthouse. The two sessions are compressed into one, as are the lawyers for the more than 80 plaintiffs. One victim, Patrick McSorley, who died of a drug overdose at age 29, appears in the play.
McSorley, played by Steve Kidd, sits silently for most of the proceedings, and speaks only at the end, when he tells of being molested as a 12-year-old by the Rev. John Geoghan. Geoghan was later tried, convicted and murdered in his jail cell.
The play deals with the behavior of Father Geoghan, one of the worst offenders, and of the Rev. Paul Shanley, another serial abuser. The evidence presented dates back to the 1960s, when people tended not to question the parish priest, when children suffered in silence.
But the priests are not on trial. The play focuses on charges that Cardinal Law was negligent in dealing with those responsible. He is seen as a man who stood up for his priests, who wrote kindly letters inquiring about their "sickness," while ignoring the victims.
Cardinal Law, who eventually resigned and is now a high Vatican official, is seen here as a master of obfuscation. He says in the play that he's not a corporate executive or a politician, as he tries to distance himself from the collapse of Enron and the Lewinsky affair, major scandals of the day. Meanwhile, letters to him would be recorded with an official stamp that said "not received at the cardinal's residence," which could mean that Cardinal Law's secretary saw the documents, but that the cardinal could claim an out.
"The whole focus of the play," said Estrella, "is that the system allowed this to happen."
'Hard to watch'
While testimony from a deposition doesn't have quite the built-in drama of a courtroom trial, the script is still hard-hitting.
"It's hard to watch," said director Judith Swift. "You've got to let your mind go to those places, and it's disturbing when you do. I think pedophilia is one of the most difficult things to understand.
"You can say it's not about sex, it's about power. But the fact of the matter is, the damage has been done."
One way Murphy makes his play more engaging, instead of being just dry legalese, is to have letters from parents acted out by a couple of generic characters who serve as many people. Cardinal Law is handed the letters to read, but as Estrella points out, he would have read them in the most dispassionate fashion. This way, Estrella said, Murphy brings some real emotion to the material.
The abuse cases were, of course, big news. While Sin plays at the Gamm, John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a nun who suspects a charismatic priest of abusing a young boy, will be coming to the Providence Performing Arts Center.
People might think they know all there is to know about the scandal, said Estrella, but for him Sin was still an eye-opener.
"You think you have a sense of what happened," he said, "and then you read it and realize you don't have a clue. Even if you followed the story, you go back to the archive, which is on-line, and it's unbelievable. It's systematic. There is something about the system that is corrupt."
One in four
According to Swift, one in four children have suffered at the hands of an abuser. There are 650,000 convicted child molesters in this country, which doesn't include the people who were never convicted for lack of evidence, or those who were not reported. Statistics show that only 1 in 10 victims report abuse, she said.
And those who came forward in this case, had to go against the church and their own faith.
"One of the issues raised by the play," said Swift, "is, when do people have the courage to speak out against powerful institutions, what does it take for people to put aside their most fundamental beliefs and say, 'This isn't true. It's not true that I can entrust my children to these people without question?' "
In the play, the children are also portrayed as sinners, said Swift.
"The children, if you think about it, have engaged in sexual activity against the teachings of the church. The fact that they have been victimized doesn't change the nature of this action."
The victims who are testifying are no longer children, but adults. And that can make a case harder to prove. It can call into question the victim's memory, and make it seem as though he or she should have somehow been able to resist.
"People make a judgment based on the adult, not the child," said Swift.
It is also difficult to see such trusted figures as priests as violating such a basic trust.
"We all want monsters to look like monsters," said Swift. "And that's the scary thing about it. They do not."
Sin: A Cardinal Deposed begins previews Thursday and runs through April 22 at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St., Pawtucket. A post-show discussion will be held after each performance. Tickets are $19 to $31. Call (401) 723-4266, or visit www.arttixri.com.
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