Uncertainty gets last word in forceful parable ‘Doubt’

The Interplayers production of “Doubt: A Parable” does exactly what a good production of this 2004 Pulitzer winner is supposed to do: It sways you one way, and then the other, and ultimately leaves you in doubt.

There is no doubt about the quality of “Doubt.” This John Patrick Shanley play concisely addresses multiple questions of faith, of psychology, of human behavior and its murky motives.

Yet ultimately the play is about a single question: Did Father Flynn molest one of the boys in this Catholic school?

The answer is deliberately left unclear – as often happens in real life. The evidence is certainly not enough to meet a legal standard, but we are not in a courtroom. Let’s just say the jury will convene, over drinks and dessert, when theatergoers gather after final curtain.

This may not be the definitive production of “Doubt” – the Broadway version won a Best Play Tony – but the Interplayers version – I saw it Friday – certainly has the power to deliver Shanley’s message.

Aaron Murphy is especially strong as Father Flynn – a young, handsome Irish priest with a warm heart, looked up to by all the boys and girls in the school. Murphy has an open, beguiling manner, endearing enough to gain the sympathy of young Sister James (Bethany Hart) during an intimate conversation in the garden.

Yet Murphy, rightly, gives the character an edge. He’s a little too smooth, a little too endearing, a little too calculating. Might this be the way a pedophile might operate? When confronted, he also reacts a little more aggressively than an innocent man might.

Ann Russell Whiteman plays the principal, Sister Aloysius, as a cold witch in a habit. It’s a chilling performance, for all its intentional stiffness and formality. At first, Whiteman frightens us with Sister Aloysius’ philosophy of running a school, which is essentially that of a tyrant: It’s better for the children to fear you than like you. Then she frightens us with her cold-eyed pursuit of Father Flynn, based on her own “certainty” of his guilt. A certainty based, it seems, mostly on her own certainty.

Because Murphy’s performance is so warm and Whiteman’s so steely, my sympathies remained largely with Father Flynn throughout the play. Yet this raises just one of the many thorny questions that Shanley has embedded in it. Are we too easily swayed by personality? In the cold, hard reckoning after curtain time, I had to admit that Flynn’s reactions were not always consistent with innocence.

Rebecca Davis delivers a brief, but forceful, performance as the boy’s mother, Mrs. Muller. Bethany Hart gives a thoughtful performance as the naïve Sister James. She was boiling with emotion during her own lines; I would also like to see some of those emotions come to the surface while reacting to the other actors’ lines.

Director Roger Welch stages the play with a stark simplicity that enhances the stripped-down nature of Shanley’s play. Most of the action takes place in the principal’s office; Welch shows how even the seating arrangements and tea service are subtle but unmistakable statements of power. When Father Flynn takes a seat behind the principal’s desk, you can feel Sister Aloysius’ silent outrage. When Father Flynn asks for three lumps of sugar in his tea, you can feel her disgust for his weakness.

I’m not sure that Welch made the right choice in having the actors affect Bronx accents. Yes, the play takes place in the Bronx in 1964, but the sometimes shaky accents are more of a distraction than an enhancement.

Yet these details make little difference in the overall impact of this riveting, fast-paced and thoroughly engrossing play.