Doubt (Broadway) (2024)

I've been to many Broadway shows, but this has never happened before. Liev Schreiber came out on stage in his priest garb and started his opening monologue. He got about a minute in and then paused. He repeated his last line, and it looked like he might've forgotten the lines. He then apologized to the audience and walked off stage. The house lights came up and we waited for ten minutes before the announcer said they were bringing in an understudy because Schreiber was ill. The play ended up starting 45 minutes late, fortunately it's only 90 minutes. The understudy Chris McGarry played Father Flynn in the original Broadway run. He knows the role, and has played in many John Patrick Shanley plays. And he was very good but I bought these tickets to see Liev Schreiber and Tyne Daly, neither of whom we ended up seeing. Tyne Daly. Tyne Daly had to withdraw from the production for health reasons before they even opened. I thought Amy Ryan was anyways good as Sister Aloysius but she is some 20 years younger than Tyne Daly, so probably plays the role very differently. Zoe Kazan is perfectly cast as the naive younger nun.

Doubt is an excellent play. I thought the movie, also directed by Shanley, was fabulous. And the stageplay has the same tensions and intensity. It's very tightly written, no wasted scenes, just four actors, just a few settings, a couple interiors and one exterior. What I think is really interesting about this play written in 2004 is that it takes place in the 1960s. In the 60s, we might see the play a certain way, but today we bring to it added context about the Catholic Church and its well-known sex abuse problem. The teaching artists kept saying it's a show about uncertainty but I disagree. Because of what we know about Catholic priests, we assume that Sister Aloysius is right. She has no doubts and neither do we about Father Flynn. The most tragic scene is the one with Mrs. Muller, who knows it too. But as a black woman in the 60s in the Bronx, she has other problems to worry about. She has to overlook it because she has no other choice. The scene hits harder if we think that she knows. Come the final scene, when Sister Aloysius says she has doubts, she's not talking about Father Flynn, she's talking about her faith. A play about a nun and a priest called Doubt must be referring to a crisis of faith. And yes, the absurdity of the Catholic Church is enough to shake a nun's faith.

There was an artist talkback after the show with the set designer David Rockwell--who apparently also has a career as an architect of high-end restaurants. I thought the set was fantastic.