The searing confrontation at the heart of Geva Theatre Center's gripping production of John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt," winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for drama, plays out beneath St. Nicholas Church's great rose window. It is an image of the looming mystery of a Church whose faith requires the absence of doubt, yet doubt appears to be nearly everywhere. In an opening sermon that testifies to a faith that rests on an open heart, a profound sense of calling, and, of course, doubt, Father Flynn asks, "What do you do when you're not sure?" In the resulting despair, he discerns "brotherhood."
Sister Aloysius, principal of St. Nicholas Elementary School, suspects Father Flynn of molesting Donald Muller, an eighth grader in the school. Shanley further complicates the situation by making Muller the school's first black student. Sister Aloysius' suspicion soon hardens into certainty, the kind of cold absolute that is the target of Shanley's concern. In a preface to the play, he wrote, "We've got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word." Sister Aloysius has no proof, only a random observation or two, but she will bring down the priest to protect the boy no matter what hurt she causes. Doing right is a hard business. On the other hand, there is something there in Father Flynn's past. She never learns exactly what it is, but by then it doesn't matter. As she tells young Sister James, "When you pursue wrongdoing, you step away from God."
The archetypal conflict appears stark, but only until the ambiguities of responsibility, faith, and concealment begin to surface. Even then, they never lose their suggestive capacity to confuse and reveal at the same time. Much of the human heart necessarily remains unlit, and Shanley's eloquence lies in part in his restraint. Attuned to the spirit of the play, Skip Greer's sure-handed direction creates a dance of tentative gestures and almost comic reluctance as the priest and the nuns try to follow the Church's rules against fraternizing, even while the intensity of their meetings binds them together.
The differences between priest and nun are partly generational. Even though the play's conflict calls up the Church's recent sexual scandals, Shanley sets "Doubt" in 1964, in the midst of the liberalizing Second Vatican Council and only a year after the assassination of America's first Roman Catholic president. A new wind has begun to blow from Rome, and Father Flynn represents the Council's spirit. He embraces a welcoming Church of warmth and love while Sister Aloysius embodies a Church of unyielding obedience where love demands sacrifice. Priest and nun alike are victims during a time of disruption and despair when both theological and cultural battle lines became rigid. Both ultimately weep out of profound guilt, but never for one another.
The problem in the play is that it's a little too easy to take sides. Sean Patrick Reilly gives a stunning performance as a dedicated priest trapped by his own humanity, and perhaps his homosexuality. But what is there for Judith Delgado as Sister Aloysius to show us but a set face and a cold eye? You can feel the audience's dislike harden into antipathy. Her Aloysius is relentless and intimidating. We never see behind the habit until the very end, but we do sense in Delgado's increasingly nuanced performance a repressed sense of humor, a nun's struggle to rid herself of the memory of a previous life, and a need to hold onto certainty with all her might.
Late in the play, when Sister Aloysius meets with Donald's mother, she finds more than she bargained for, a mother who cares only about her son's future and his ability to survive his bullying father. She will also not be bullied, not even by her Church, nor will she sacrifice her son for the sins of the priest or his Church. It is a riveting and complex encounter, and Nikki E. Walker as the mother is shrewd and tough. Finally, Lia Aprile as Sister James provides Shanley with a sympathetic but still unformed observer caught in the middle, a confused young teacher struggling to find her way between her vow of obedience and the promptings of her heart.
"Doubt" is about the power of faith for good or ill, and the potentially redeeming power of doubt. It also teaches a lesson in the power of language - what is said, what is hinted at, what remains unsaid. Shanley's writing is a lesson in the eloquence of ambiguity, of hints and silences. In every play that matters, the language carries all that matters - character and conflict, what pain we must endure and what succor we can find. After all, words can be worth thousands of pictures. It depends on whether we can still remember how to listen.