The Face of an Honest Man

Doubt – The Gift Theatre

Doubt, the Pulitzer Prize winning play and basis for the film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, is being given a Chicago revival by The Gift Theatre at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre. It centers on St. Nicolas, a parochial school in the Bronx in 1964, and its principal, the stern Sister Aloysius and a new progressive priest, Father Flynn. One of Sister Aloysius’ teachers, Sister James, comments that Flynn is paying special attention to one boy, Donald Muller, the school’s first black student. Sister Aloysius becomes convinced that something inappropriate is happening and embarks on a crusade to stop him.

This play has received near universal acclaim in addition to a Tony and a Pultizer, and with good reason. I think the heart of its success is how it manages to give every character a believable duality. Sister Aloysius could be a concerned educator, or a self-appointed inquisitor with an axe to grind. Flynn could genuinely be interested in helping an isolated boy in the school, or he could be taking advantage of that isolation. Even if Flynn is protecting a secret about Donald, it may not be what Sister Aloysius think it is. In most stories that strive for this kind of balance, it can rob the characters of a sense of reality, because everything has to be too neat to succeed. Instead, the show is anchored in exploring and empathizing with each of the characters and their struggle with ‘the truth.’ This may seem a little unrelated, but my all-time favorite book is Dante’s Inferno. In that book, Dante describes the embodiment of fraud as a great winged reptile with the “face of an honest man.” I kept thinking about that over the course of night. Every time a character came close to absolutely convincing me, I remembered that being very convincing is exactly what liars are good at.

I’m going to do something I don’t normally do, in that I’m going to praise every actor in the cast individually. It’s a small cast, to be sure, but outside of a two-hander, someone usually gets lost in the mix trying to cover everything. That would be an unforgivable disservice to this cast.

Michael Patrick Thornton as Father Flynn has the most difficult balance to maintain in the show. He has to remain a cipher while eliciting our sympathy. If he is too dismissive or too concerned about the accusations, it will tip the audience one way or the other. In scene after scene, Thornton managed to land each scene with real impact while maintaining his ambiguity. Is his relationship with Aloysius slightly antagonistic from the beginning because he sees her as clinging to an old way of doing things he genuinely wants to change, or because she is the only one who has tried to stop him? In what my friend who accompanied me and I agreed was the best scene in the show, Flynn and Sister James are in the convent’s garden and he is sincerely pleading with her to believe he is innocent, something she visibly wants to do. The actors created and maintained a powerful connection throughout the scene, and when Sister James tearfully acknowledges she does believe Flynn, the audience believes it too. But then you stop to wonder if Flynn’s plea is so effective because, if he is what Sister Aloysius says he is, he would obviously be a master manipulator. Normally, shows that try to leave characters or events ambiguous end up either failing to give one side its due, or the ambiguity is too perfect to feel real. It feels completely organic here, and that’s on the strength of Thornton’s performance.

Cyd Blakewell as Sister James is the closest to an audience stand in for me. She wants to believe Flynn is innocent, but more that that, she wants to not have to wrestle with the question in the first place. Regardless of how this story turns out, Sister James has lost some of her innocence. In Blakewell’s hands, that loss is quietly heartbreaking. I also want to compliment her for the ability to genuinely cry on cue. Not just watery-eyed-about-to-cry. But full-on cry. That is a rare and impressive skill.

Jennifer Glasse as Mrs. Muller, Donald’s mother, has the smallest part, only one scene with dialogue, but she packs so much into that scene. When confronted with Sister Aloysius’ allegations, her response is not the one you might expect. She knows this school is the only path her son has for an eventual chance at college and a better life. Regardless of the outcome of making these allegations public, her son would lose that chance. I don’t want to say too much more, because the insight she provides works best if you don’t see it coming. Sufficed to say, Mrs. Muller’s presence is a reminder that the ability to right wrongs is its own kind of privilege. If the play were merely Sister Aloysius versus Father Flynn, the show would be a fascinating exploration of the nature of truth. With the addition of Mrs. Muller, we are reminded that in the real world, knowing who the bad guy really is doesn’t mean you are necessarily in a position to stop them. Where Sister Aloysius is crusading for truth, Mrs. Muller is looking to survive. Glasse’s performance packs all that and more into one scene, and I will see her in my mind anytime I hear the phrase “still waters run deep” again.

Mary Ann Thebus as Sister Aloysius is fantastic. She is imperious and wears her terrifying reputation as a badge of honor and acknowledgment that she is doing her job right. Her wry observations about the decline of society sound oddly familiar, even if they are about ‘ballpoint pens’ rather than ‘screen time.’ I’m sure anyone in the audience who went to school before Vatican II had a nervous flashback watching her. That all said, there is, if not warmth, a sincerity that is undeniable and holds up her half of the drama beautifully. She does genuinely care about the students’ well-being, even if her priorities feel draconian and out-of-date to us. This is a good place to mention something that The Gift Theatre apprised the reviewers of in advance of the show and gave us permission to discuss in our reviews. Due to the side effects of medication, Thebus was on book for much of the show. I bring this up not as a critique of her performance, but to praise how effective it was, even with a script in her hand. Especially in the early scenes when she is dressing down Sister James, I was left with the impression that Sister Aloysius knew this conversation did not require her full attention, so she did not give it, and continued to work through the papers on her desk. Beyond that scene, it simply didn’t matter. Thebus is a gifted actor, and regardless of what was in her hands, she never broke the impression that Aloysius is, and was used to being, the most powerful person in any room she is in.

I also want to compliment The Gift Theatre. I think it would have been an understandable decision to replace Thebus with her understudy, and that would have been a sad loss. Theater is almost certainly the most collaborative form of art I can imagine. Even in a one-person show, countless people, on and off stage, go into making a show work. Whenever I get the chance to perform, my favorite part of the experience is getting to work with amazing people to make something bigger than myself. The faith and support the company and the cast showed in Thebus was a lovely reminder of that, and it paid off in spades.

The play is a lean 90 minutes without an intermission, and it doesn’t waste a single one of them. At the start of the show, Father Flynn gives a sermon. He says that the experience of shared doubt can be as powerful an experience and bond as shared certainty. The incredibly talented cast in this exquisite production certainly proves the point. More than anything, I left this show thinking about the four very human characters this incredible cast brought to life.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented March 7-March 31 by The Gift Theatre at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted St., Chicago.

Tickets are available in person at the box office, by calling 312-335-1650 or by going to www.steppenwolf.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.