Room for Doubt, by Channing Gray, April 8, 2007

Room for Doubt

By Channing Gray
Providence Journal
April 8, 2007

http://www.projo.com/theater/content/artsun-shanley_04-08-07_A14ROBK.1034c11.html

There was a time, said playwright John Patrick Shanley, when doubt was considered a sign of wisdom. Today it is perceived as weakness.

We live in partisan times, said Shanley, speaking from his home in New York. Television commentators spend their time shouting one another down, and pundits are not willing to admit they don't know all the answers.

John Patrick Shanley, Doug Hughes, Cherry Jones

Doubt playwright John Patrick Shanley is embraced by director Doug Hughes, as star Cherry Jones looks on, when Shanley won the Pulitzer Prize for his drama in 2005.
Photo by The New York Times/ Ruth Fremson

"If you go on Chris Matthews and express doubt," said Shanley, "you're going to come out like hamburger."

Shanley is talking about his award-winning play Doubt, which this week comes to the Providence Performing Arts Center. The show was the toast of Broadway in 2005, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and several Tonys.

And it has left audiences wondering.

On one level, Doubt takes its cue from the molestation scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church. Set in a Bronx parochial school in 1964, it deals with a strong-willed nun who suspects a charismatic priest of abusing a male student. She takes action, even though she doesn't have conclusive proof of wrongdoing.

But there is more to the play than that. On another level, it is about living with doubt, about not knowing who is right and who is wrong.

"I've always said the last act of the play takes place after the audience goes out to dinner or drives home," said the Bronx-born Shanley.

"People have really significant conversations, and they are not simply about whether you think this person is guilty or this person is not guilty. It evokes questions about life choices and experiences from when people were kids."

Shanley, 57, knows what people are talking about because his e-mail address is listed in the program so viewers can share their reactions to the play. The other day, he got an e-mail from a nun who attended a performance with a priest who found that the play made him uncomfortable.

It reminded him of a time when he had to live with an "atmosphere of suspicion," she wrote. A couple of days later the priest e-mailed him, but never mentioned that he was uneasy.

Doubt also has political overtones.

When Shanley wrote it, the United States was preparing to invade Iraq. The government was assuring us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and most Americans had faith that their leaders wouldn't say that unless it were true, said Shanley. Now, Americans know that is not so.

"Putting your faith in the government or organized religion is putting your judgment in someone else's hands," said Shanley, "and you should never do that. You should always retain your judgment and continue to use it, to be skeptical and thoughtful, and not be quick to jump to conclusions."

'My advance man is Jesus'

By any standard, Doubt has been a huge success. It has already been performed in China and is about to be translated into Japanese, before the national tour has ended. Shanley is just back from Prague, where he saw the show. He has been to Dublin to join numerous relatives on opening night, and to Paris, where Roman Polanski directed.

"My advance man is Jesus Christ," said Shanley. "Anywhere Catholicism went, that's where the play goes. It's been done in South Africa. But not Zimbabwe. That's bothering me."

Is he surprised Doubt has won such praise?

"There's no way you think something like this is going to happen," said Shanley, who has written more than two dozen plays and 20 film scripts. "It's outside the norm.

"I've had plays that have run a year, and plays that no one wanted to see. But Doubt wasn't either of those. This is a play that has won awards I didn't even know existed."

One reason for its success is that it appeals to a lot of different audiences.

"It has real-world concerns and philosophical concerns, and a sort of whodunit quality. A bit of Agatha Christie. And there are a lot of different kinds of people out there with a lot of different appetites. Some people like to read murder mysteries, some people like to read Camus."

This is not the first time Shanley's work has been honored. He won the 1987 Academy Award for the screenplay for the romantic comedy Moonstruck, and before that, his first commercial success, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, enjoyed widespread appeal.

But gaining recognition took a while. Shanley started out as a youthful poet, realizing he was meant to write for the stage after taking a playwriting course in college. The next decade was one of "bad reviews and utter poverty." Shanley, who has two adopted 14-year-old sons, said that for 10 years he never earned more than $100 a year from his writing. He worked as a handyman to pay the bills.

After Doubt comes Defiance

Shanley wrote Doubt based on his own recollections of a childhood spent in Catholic schools, several of which he was "picked up by the scruff of the neck and thrown out of." He was educated in a school very much like the St. Nicholas of the play, although he said he never witnessed any instances of sexual abuse. The action is set in the 1960s because that's when he was a student.

"The nuns aren't wearing the bonnets any more," he said, "and I loved the bonnets. And the entire tenor of the discourse within the school has changed. I've been back there in recent years, and there is no overlap; it's a completely different animal.

"It's looser, the kids dress differently, and the faculty is almost all not from the clergy. I was writing about what I knew."

Doubt is part of a trilogy dealing with social issues facing America. The second installment, Defiance, is about Shanley's experiences in the Marine Corps. The play, which has already been produced, is set on a Marine base in North Carolina in 1971 and pits a white officer against a black one.

But Shanley said he had to take a break before writing the third part of the trilogy.

"I said I have to do a comedy. I can't stay serious this long or I'll go out of my mind. So I'm doing six interrelated one-act plays this summer at Vassar. They'll have music, romantic comedy and be great fun."

And in November, shooting will begin on Doubt the movie, with Meryl Streep starring as Sister Aloysius, the unbending nun. Shanley, who wrote the screenplay, will direct.

Who knows, maybe he will win another Oscar.

Doubt runs Tuesday through Sunday at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence. Tickets range from $38-$65. Call (401) 421-2787, or visit ppacri.org.

E-mail: cgray@projo.com