This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

5th May 2007

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Doubt is important, even necessary, to all artists. The creative process is stimulated by the challenge of holding multiple – possibly contradictory – ways of seeing the world in balance. This anticipates the various ways in which a work of art is ultimately viewed: ambiguity is, after all, prerequisite to interpretation. Writers hold doubt especially dear: Robert Graves’ poem “In Broken Images” celebrates the achievement of “a new understanding of my confusion” rather than the false (and dangerous) assurance of unshakeable opinions. Samuel Beckett avowed neither religious belief nor agnostic disbelief, thinking instead that “it is better to live, and to admit to living, in uncertainty: better because more honest”. South Africa’s Lionel Abrahams, after the 9/11 terrorist strikes, bemoaned the “divergent certainties” that led to and were aggravated by those attacks, noting that those who cling to “passionate convictions” cannot abide “the insult of questioning, the chill treachery of doubt”.

It was post-9/11, post-Afghanistan and mid-Iraq (in 2005) that American playwright John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt first appeared on Broadway. The play has won numerous awards (including four Tonys), Shanley has received the Pulitzer Prize and there is a film version starring Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman on the way. It is undoubtedly a finely crafted drama. Over and above this, however, the play’s warm reception may be understood as part of a broad reaction against the ideological fundamentalism that has defined the conflicts of the George W. Bush era. Still, the play itself contains no overt references to current political tensions; it is set in 1964, the year following John F. Kennedy’s assassination and a time when, as Shanley describes it, “not just me, but the whole world seemed to be going through some kind of vast puberty”.

Doubt is, then, at least partly autobiographical. The action takes place at a Catholic church school in the Bronx, New York, like the one Shanley himself attended. It is framed by the stand-off, following the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s, between those who upheld “the old ways” – conservative morality and strict codes of behaviour based on propriety and piety – and those who sought to make the Church more progressive and more accessible to members of a constantly modernising society. The former group is represented in the play by Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a war widow-turned-nun who, as head of St Nicholas school, is a stern disciplinarian. Adeptly portrayed by Sandra Prinsloo in this production, her dry wit and grim exterior belie both her vulnerability and her commitment to the students in her charge. On the other end of the spectrum is Father Brendan Flynn, who is candid, approachable and deliberately down-to-earth. He is also a masterful sermoniser, and Jeremy Crutchley’s performance is particularly strong in this regard, winning the audience/congregation over with rhetorical flair.

I asked director Janice Honeyman how she and the cast went about transposing the ‘sacred’ milieu of holy orders into the ‘secular’ environment of the theatre. She mentioned that their preparation included frequent interaction with practising priests and nuns, but went on to emphasise the many similarities between thespian and ecclesiastical vocations: “Don’t forget that theatre is the temple of the arts. The processes leading towards understanding in the arts are the same as those in the pursuit of spiritual understanding.” Likewise, for Honeyman, actors bringing their personal experiences to their roles do just what Father Flynn does in his sermons, relating personal experiences to theological tenets. In Doubt, there are various other points of correspondence between theatre and church; Flynn’s sermons, for instance, function as a kind of chorus.

Precisely because Father Flynn is so amiable, we are reluctant to accept Sister Aloysius’ accusation that he is a paedophile (here again, the play successfully bridges past and present, insofar as revelations about the phenomenon of paederasty and the Catholic clergy have caused great rifts within the Church in recent years). Nevertheless, even when her claims seem most unfounded – “I have no proof,” she expounds, “but I have my certainty” – we cannot be convinced of Flynn’s innocence. This is the central, irresolvable doubt depicted in the play.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the young boy who has allegedly been “seduced” by the priest is the only black pupil at a school serving Irish- and Italian-American communities (on this point, it may be noted that the production’s sole weakness is the inconsistency of the ‘ethnically inflected’ American accents). Race is a peripheral issue in the play, but it is brought to the fore when the boy’s mother, Mrs Muller, gives Sister Aloysius a thorough dressing-down for interfering in her son’s educational progress. Ilse Oppert has only one scene in which to make an impression in this role, but it is a substantial one. Her Mrs Muller is fiercely protective, but ultimately desperate – she views Sister Aloysius’ concerns over sexual ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as luxuries that are not afforded to African Americans having to make their way in a racially skewed society.

The play’s subject matter also exposes the gender bias in traditional church structures. Although she is a stickler for following protocol, Sister Aloysius’ vendetta against Father Flynn seems to be driven by years of bitter obedience to what is essentially a sexist hierarchy. Tinarie van Wyk Loots is well cast as Sister James, a young nun and teacher discovering the restrictions placed on her otherwise free and enthusiastic spirit. Sister James is caught between deference to the old system and an inclination towards the new, and it is with her that the audience wavers over which of her superiors (Aloysius or Flynn) to support. Ultimately we are left, with her, less naïve than at the start of the play – but also less sure of ourselves.

It would be easy to locate the play’s relevance to South African audiences within the parameters of prejudice (racism and sexism) or, alternatively, to embrace Shanley’s injunction “to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty ... there is no last word” by resisting post-apartheid ideologues as much as apartheid-era dogma. But this, according to Honeyman, would be to perpetuate a “mentality of separatism”: the false perception that South Africa’s racial problems are unique, or that a play about “human flaws” in a different country to our own must first be localised in order to be powerful.

Discussing the play-making process, Honeyman (whose reputation as South Africa’s foremost director extends to her international experience, in the UK and elsewhere) acknowledges that the universal problems of arts funding and the status of culture as “a poor relation to sport” in terms of popular entertainment are exacerbated by the South African situation. But she insists that theatre is alive and well in this country – and, indeed, her own prolific activity as a director bears this out. Honeyman moves easily from pantomimes to Shakespearean tragedy, from work by Fugard and Kani to musicals and large-cast ensembles, from stage adaptations of classic English novels to Afrikaans translations of Chekhov or Eugene O’Neill. She is opposed to narrow definitions that limit ‘real theatre’ to cutting-edge new work with either fashionably minimalist or suggestively surreal sets and costumes. The staging of Doubt at the Baxter is a case in point; there are those who might find the realist set “old-fashioned” (again, Honeyman notes, this is germane to the thematic tension between old and new in the play), although this reviewer is not one of them. At the end of May, Doubt will move from the Baxter’s large auditorium to a smaller space – the Arena at the State Theatre. This will require a reconceptualisation of the set as well as the way in which the play is executed; the intimate atmosphere will suit the closeted, cloistered and almost claustrophobic mood of Shanley’s play.