Doubt on Broadway - Podcast

Posted on September 9, 2005

Doubt On Broadway

I had a run-in with Doubt recently in New York: Doubt, the play at the Walter Kerr Theatre and ordinary doubt. Doubt, the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play, is by John Patrick Shanley who, according to the printed program, was a loser who was kicked out of every school he attended. In reality, however, he is a screenwriter, (won an Academy Award for Moonstruck) who abandoned Hollywood saying that money, celebrity and praise are the equivalents of heroin, a reality he grew up with in the Bronx. He returned to New York to become a prolific playwright. Doubt is the story of a nun who suspects a Catholic priest of molesting a child. She has no doubt about her belief and relentlessly pursues a padre who questions his own beliefs. The play is exasperating for the opinionated, especially in a country where a President is elected because of his alleged moral certainty. You leave Doubt testing your own perceptions of right and wrong. It is a powerful hour and a half without intermission. My wife and I have been talking about it ever since. The Manhattan Theatre Club is producing a new play by Shanley called Defiance about “Two Marine officers, one black and one white, are on a collision course over race, women, and the high cost of doing the right thing,” It opens February 28th next year.There is a guy on Broadway now doing a One-Man Star Wars Trilogy. Dressed in black coveralls with no props, Charles Ross morphs into everyone from Han Solo to Princess Leia to Jabba the Hutt. At one point, he’s the Death Star. Reviewers say its pretty good but you really should be a trekkie to appreciate it. At the Lambs theatre on W44th. A play called “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead”, an award winner in the 2004 New York Fringe Festival is going Off Broadway in December. It is a skewed interpretation of Charles Schulz’ Peanuts after “The Beagle” dies. It involves a missing pen pal, an abused pianist, a pyromaniac ex-girlfriend, two drunk cheerleaders, a homophobic quarterback, a burnt out Buddhist and, of course a “Very New York” drama queen sister.