Doubt (Play)

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    Review: In ‘Doubt,’ What He Knows, She Knows, God Knows

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    Liev Schreiber and Amy Ryan star in a revival of John Patrick Shanley’s moral head spinner about pride, the priesthood and presumptions of pedophilia.Here are a few things Sister Aloysius cannot abide: ballpoint pens, “Frosty the Snowman,” long fingernails like Father Flynn’s, Father Flynn himself.She is what you’d call a forbidding nun, a Sister of Charity without much of it. (Her name means something like “warrior.”) The principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, she defines a good teacher as one who is a discomfort to her students, a “fierce moral guardian,” not a friend.“If you are vigilant,” she tells young Sister James, “they will not need to be.”But Father Flynn, following the spirit of the recent Second Vatican Council, and presumably his own inclinations, does not lead with fear. In ministering to his mostly Italian and Irish congregation, he seeks to give the church “a more familiar face.” His sermons are warm, told with jokes and accents. He coaches the boys’ basketball team. Add to Sister Aloysius’s catalog of unholy tendencies his suggestion that they occasionally take the students for ice cream.Even if nothing else set these two forces in opposition, there would be enough here for a fine play about varieties of faith. But John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt: A Parable,” first seen on Broadway in 2005, is much more than that. It is a sturdy melodrama, an infallible crowd-pleaser, a detective yarn, a character study and an inquest into the unknowable.It is also, in the handsome revival that opened on Thursday at the Todd Haimes Theater, something I hadn’t really noticed before: a battle of the sexes. For in the church of that day, as perhaps in our own, mutual distrust often arose between the men who had all the power and the women who saw how they used it.Why, after all, should Aloysius (Amy Ryan) already dislike the popular Flynn (Liev Schreiber) when the action begins? Why should she suspect that behind his “more familiar face” lies overfamiliarity? Is it his ballpoint pen? Those detestable fingernails?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Patrick Shanley on ‘Doubt’ Revival and ‘Brooklyn Laundry’

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      The playwright discusses the Broadway revival of “Doubt” and his latest, “Brooklyn Laundry.” “People are disagreeing violently with themselves,” he says.In a life of feeling things incredibly deeply, John Patrick Shanley has experienced some thrilling highs: the rapturous audience response in 1984 to “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” his first success as a playwright; accepting an Academy Award in 1988 for best screenplay for “Moonstruck.”Add to that list the thrill of discovering the luxury of drop-off laundry. “I was like 35 years old, and I was in Poughkeepsie,” Shanley said in a phone interview during a rehearsal break last month. “I went in to do my laundry, and after a couple of questions, I realized that they would do it for me, fold it and give it back to me. And I was like, ‘This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life.’”Shanley’s latest play, “Brooklyn Laundry,” is about sacrifice and everyday heroism that begins with a character placing her “bag of rags” on the scale at a laundromat. Opening on Wednesday at New York City Center, it is the 13th play the playwright has premiered with the Manhattan Theater Club. “There’s an incredible flair, intelligence, grace and humor to his work,” said Lynne Meadow, the theater company’s artistic director. Most of all, she added, “he writes with such humanity, and so personally.”“Brooklyn Laundry,” whose cast includes Cecily Strong and David Zayas, is also part of an unofficial triptych of Shanley plays this season. In January, an Off Broadway revival of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” starring Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott, concluded a successful run at the Lucille Lortel Theater. On March 7, the first Broadway revival of his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 play, “Doubt,” about a priest who may or may not have molested a child, opens in a Roundabout Theater Company production led by Liev Schreiber and Amy Ryan.David Zayas and Cecily Strong in “Brooklyn Laundry,” Shanley’s latest play. It opens Wednesday in a Manhattan Theater Club production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn a conversation that touched on all three plays, Shanley revealed that the accidental retrospective isn’t the only reason his life has been flashing before his eyes recently. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About This Crazily Crowded Broadway Spring Season

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      Why are 18 shows opening in March and April, and which one is for you? Our theater reporter has answers.Is Broadway facing a bonanza or a blood bath?The next two months are jam-packed with new productions — 18 are scheduled to open in March and April — while the industry is still struggling to adapt to the new, and more challenging, realities of a postpandemic theater era.For potential ticket buyers, there will be a dizzying array of options. In early April, about 38 shows should be running on Broadway (the exact number depends on unexpected closings or openings between now and then).“From a consumer point of view, we’re excited about the amount of choice there is on Broadway,” said Deeksha Gaur, the executive director of TDF, the nonprofit that runs the discount TKTS booths. Anticipating that bewildered tourists will need help figuring out what shows to see, TDF is already dispatching red-jacketed staffers to preview performances and updating a sprawling cheat sheet as the employees brace for questions on what the new shows are about and who is in them.But the density of late-season openings — 11 plays and musicals over a nine-day stretch in late April — has producers and investors worried about how those shows will find enough ticket buyers to survive.“On the one hand, how incredible that our industry perseveres, and that there is so much new work on Broadway,” said Rachel Sussman, one of the lead producers of “Suffs,” a musical about women’s suffrage that is opening in mid-April.“On the other hand,” Sussman added, “we’re still recovering from the pandemic, and audiences are not back in full force, so there is industrywide anxiety about whether we have the audience to sustain all of these shows. It’s one of those things that only time will tell.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Broadway’s Crunchtime Is Also Its Best Life

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      Eighteen openings in two months will drive everyone crazy. But maybe there should be even more.Broadway is the pinnacle of the commercial theater, a billion-dollar cultural enterprise and a jewel of New York City. So why is it run like a Christmas tree farm?I don’t mean that it invites too much tinsel. I mean that it operates at a very low hum for 10 months of the year and then goes into a two-month frenzy of product dumping.This year, 18 shows, more than half of the season’s entire output, will open on Broadway in March and April — 12 in just the last two weeks before the Tony Awards cutoff on April 25. Like the film industry in December, angling for Oscars before its end-of-year deadline, theater producers bet on the short memory of voters (and a burst of free publicity on the Tonys telecast) to hoist their shows into summer and beyond.From a business standpoint, this is obviously unwise. Instead of maintaining a drumbeat of openings throughout the year — as Hollywood, with hundreds of releases, can do despite its December splurge — Broadway, with only 30 to 40 openings in a typical season, keeps choosing to deplete the airspace, exhaust the critics and confuse the audiences with its brief, sudden, springtime overdrive.Of course, I shouldn’t care about the business standpoint; I’m one of those soon-to-be-exhausted critics. Please pity me having to see a lot of shows from good seats for free.But regardless of the as-yet-unjudgeable merits of the work, I find myself enthusiastic about the glut. I might even argue for more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tyne Daly Withdraws From ‘Doubt’ on Broadway, Citing Health

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      Amy Ryan will replace her in the show, which also stars Liev Schreiber and began previews on Saturday.Tyne Daly, the Tony- and Emmy-winning actress, is withdrawing from a starring role in the first Broadway revival of “Doubt: A Parable,” citing health issues.Daly was set to star in the production of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 play about a sexual assault accusation against a Catholic priest. She will be replaced by Amy Ryan, who will begin performances Feb. 13.Roundabout Theater Company, the nonprofit producing the revival, announced the cast change on Tuesday, saying in a news release, “Ms. Daly was unexpectedly hospitalized on Friday and unfortunately needs to withdraw from the production while she receives medical care; she is thankfully expected to make a full recovery.” The organization did not provide further details.The “Doubt” revival, also starring Liev Schreiber, was to begin previews last Friday, but that first performance was canceled by Roundabout. The production then began performances on Saturday, with the understudy Isabel Keating going on in Daly’s stead; Keating has been performing the lead role since then, and will continue to do so through Sunday.Daly was to play Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a nun who serves as the principal at a Catholic school and who suspects the parish priest, Father Brendan Flynn, of misconduct. Schreiber is playing the priest. In 2008, the play was adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman; it was also adapted into an opera.Daly, 77, has worked steadily onstage and screen. She has performed in seven previous Broadway shows, winning a Tony Award in 1990 for starring in a revival of “Gypsy,” and earning two more nominations since. She has also won six Emmy Awards, for the television shows “Cagney & Lacey,” “Christy” and “Judging Amy.”Ryan, 55, has performed in five previous Broadway shows, and was nominated twice for Tony Awards in Roundabout revivals. Her last appearance on Broadway was nearly two decades ago, when she was featured in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Since that time she has worked primarily on film and television, earning an Oscar nomination for her work in “Gone Baby Gone.”The “Doubt” revival, directed by Scott Ellis, will now open March 7, one week later than initially planned. The production, which is scheduled to run until April 14, also features Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Zoe Kazan. More

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      Tyne Daly and Liev Schreiber to Lead Broadway ‘Doubt’ Revival

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      The production, presented by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, is to begin performances in February.Tyne Daly and Liev Schreiber will star in a revival of “Doubt: A Parable” on Broadway this season.The play, by John Patrick Shanley, is about a nun who suspects a priest has sexually abused a student at a Catholic school. In 2005, the year it first opened on Broadway, it won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play; it was later adapted into a film and an opera.The new production is to be produced by the Roundabout Theater Company, and to be directed by Scott Ellis, who has been serving as the nonprofit’s interim artistic director since the death of artistic director Todd Haimes in April. (All Broadway theaters are planning to dim the lights of their marquees for one minute at 6:45 p.m. tonight in Haimes’s memory.)Daly, who will play the nun who serves as the school principal, and Schreiber, who will play the parish priest, are both Tony winners. Daly, known to television viewers for “Cagney & Lacey,” among other shows, won a Tony Award in 1990 for starring in a revival of “Gypsy.” Schreiber, the star of Showtime’s “Ray Donovan,” won a Tony Award in 2005 for a revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross.”The production is to begin performances next February at the American Airlines Theater.“Doubt” will be one of three plays staged by Roundabout on Broadway this season. The others are “I Need That,” a new play written by Theresa Rebeck and starring Danny DeVito alongside his daughter, Lucy, and “Home,” a revival, directed by Kenny Leon, of a 1979 play by Samm-Art Williams.“Doubt” will not be the only play by Shanley on the New York stage this season. The Manhattan Theater Club, the nonprofit that staged the original production of “Doubt,” plans to present a new Shanley play, “Brooklyn Laundry,” Off Broadway next winter. More