Daniela Vlaskalic as Sister James and David Storch as Father Flynn. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.
Doubt, a parable
By John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Marti Maraden
Featuring Seana McKenna, David Storch, Daniela Vlaskalic, Raven Dauda
Presented by The Canadian Stage Company
At the Bluma until May 30
By Matt McGeachy
“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.” ~ Emile Zola
If a theatre critic had to identify a single character from Doubt with which he or she most identifies, you could bet money it would be Sister Aloysius. She’s everything most of us aspire to be: witty, quick on her feet, good with words (sometimes at the expense of being good with people), and demanding. But it is also Sister Aloysius who crusades against the priest at her parish school, Father Flynn, based not on facts she possesses, but on her own certainty. In one of the critical confrontational scenes between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn, Flynn reminds Sister Aloysius, “Even if you feel certainty, it is an emotion and not a fact.” Truer words about theatre critics might never have been spoken. Unfortunately, it may have been the only moment of truth in the entire Canadian Stage production.
Doubt is set at a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, a turbulent time in the United States and a turbulent time in the Church. Donald Muller is the first black student at this Catholic school, where Father Flynn, a reform-minded priest, has taken a liking to him and serves as his protector. Sister Aloysius, the traditionalist principal of the school, suspects Father Flynn of molesting Donald — a charge she cannot prove — and begins a crusade to remove Father Flynn from the parish.
The script is complex and enduring. It deals with rich themes: race, gender, sex, power, religion, doubt. These themes require subtle presentation and expert timing to bring Shanley’s script to life. The tug-of-war between Father Flynn (David Storch), a sympathetic character despite the charges against him, and Sister Aloysius (Seana McKenna), provides a veritable gold mine of subtle accusation and innuendo. This battle of the wills should make for great entertainment, and just as the innocent Sister James (Daniela Vlaskalic) does not know on whose side to fall, the audience does not know with any certainty whether Father Flynn did molest the young boy. In this production, director Marti Maraden apparently directed the actors to be so subtle to the point that it felt like nothing was happening for 90 minutes; instead of uncertainty and doubt, we were left with ambivalence and apathy.
Seana McKenna’s Sister Aloysius is delightful to watch at the beginning of the play. McKenna’s timing and rapid-fire responses in dialogue were superb to watch. This intensity did not persist into the show. Rather than seeming genuinely disturbed at the suspicion that Flynn molested the boy, she seems immune to it. He might as well have forgotten to send in his attendance slips to the office. This lack of intensity carried itself through to the most disappointing confrontational scenes. Instead of child molestation, McKenna and David Storch might as well have been arguing about whether to include “Frosty the Snowman” in the Christmas pageant.
Daniela Vlaskalic’s Sister James is at once the most believable and the most irritating character in the whole play. An idealistic naïf, Vlaskalic’s Sister James at least showed some true emotion — even if I didn’t buy her “Maryland” accent. Sister James, torn between the two powerful competing factions, best represents the audience on stage. We don’t want to believe that Flynn has committed this terrible act, and neither does she. But like her, we don’t want to simply ignore it for the sake of simplicity. Vlaskalic’s portrayal honoured this, even if she didn’t have much to work on from the other characters on stage.
The greatest disappointment was David Storch’s Father Flynn. What should have been a complex, sympathetic character was reduced to an ignorant, sexist chap wrapped in a chintzy New York accent. Flynn is in many ways the richest character of the parable. He represents the shades of grey that exist in the world and in the Holy Church. When he speaks of moving the Church forward into the new century by including new material in the Christmas pageant, of embracing doubt as a unifying force, or of creating a warmer, more open Church, it shows the progressive side of Catholicism. When he walks into Sister Aloysius’s office and immediately sits in the big chair behind the desk, it shows the conservative gender relations of the Church. Father Flynn, like the Church itself, is both of these things; complexity is the cornerstone of the faith. Storch’s portrayal forsakes this complexity in favour of simplicity, which is certainly a form of laziness. Rather than leaving the theatre questioning our own relationship with religion and certainty, Flynn reminds us of the awful, sexist, ignorant part of Christianity that drives so many people away.
Doubt was a disappointment, but to paraphrase from Sister Aloysius, we all expect more from our best students. Unfortunately, this means we go much harder on them when they fail.
