Just over a decade ago, The Boston Globe wrote a series of stories about the conviction and sentencing of five Roman Catholic priests for child sex abuse in the Boston area. The paper’s coverage of the “pedophile priest crisis” forced the widespread issue into the limelight, which led to more victims speaking out and more charges brought against these priests.
The Department of Performing Arts’ Doubt, a Parable, directed by Professor Maya Roth, uses the possibility of such abuse in a 1964 Catholic school to question the idea of morality and truth.
The audience’s reactions are essential to the play’s function. Starting with the opening of the play, we are placed in the position of churchgoers during a sermon by Father Flynn, double-cast as Addison Williams (COL ‘14) and Caleb Lewis (COL ‘16). The stage appears like the altar of a Church to the audience—votive candles are on the sides of the stage and a realistic stained glass window at the back of the set.
In Flynn’s opening sermon, he addresses the audience. His direct glare shows us we will be on a journey alongside the characters exploring the idea of doubt.
“There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe. And I want to say to you: doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.” When he exits the stage after his sermon, all that remains is an illuminated cross-shaped garden in the middle of the stage, an ominous reminder of the Christian moral code. We understand we are here to judge—or at least try to.
Though the audience will try to grasp to the existence of truth, that there is a right and a wrong, we will fail to do so throughout. The actors bring to life the uncertainty in the script, in the characters’ own words. Maddie Kelley’s (COL ‘16) Sister Aloysius, the nun who suspects Flynn’s abuse of the students, holds a permanent frown, loves rules, and despises ballpoint pens more than just about anything.
Flynn, on the other hand, prefers to keep his nails long and put sugar in his tea. He believes the Church should be more like an open and welcoming family than a stern observer of rules, as Aloysius would prefer it. Do Aloysius’s suspicions of Flynn, then, arise from her philosophical differences on the role of Church and school? Or does his eagerness to be close and friendly with the children at the school arise from a more insidious desire?
While we will never uncover the truth of their motives, the two characters are contrasted by an entirely innocent nun, Sister James, played by Elizabeth-Burton Jones (GRAD ‘14), and the possibly abused child’s mother, Mrs. Muller, played by Marlene Cox (COL ‘16). These characters serve to highlight the fact that truth is entirely subjective: Sister James seeks a truth that which will allow her to return to her joy of teaching, free of worry. Though Jones is somewhat awkward in her stage presence, her facial expressions succeed in portraying a woman tortured by these possible truths. Mrs. Muller, on the other hand, chooses a truth that will help her son survive until he gets to high school, even if that means the possible sexual abuse of her son. “It’s just ‘til June,” she insists.
Heightening the subjectivity of all this is Roth’s decision to double cast Flynn. While the audience is just as uncertain of the truth with both actors, Williams’s Flynn appears to be (or tries to appear as) a good person in a bad situation. He is much more calm and subtle, while Lewis’s Flynn is mercurial, more forward and didactic, advocating for his truth and morality. Though Williams’s Flynn is a somewhat more sympathetic character, both actors are able to create that infuriating sense of doubt.
In the end, just as Flynn’s sermon indicates, we are not alone in our uncertainty. As a group, the audience has been led to question its assumptions of the existence of truth and non-subjective morality. We are left with a surprisingly gratifying, though still somewhat maddening, sense of doubt.
Gonda Theatre
March 27, 29, April 5, 10 at 8 p.m.
March 30 at 7 p.m.
April 6 at 2 p.m.
April 12 at 1 p.m.
$8-18
