Monica Dolan and Sam Spruell
in Doubt at Chichester Festival Theatre 2022
041 – Doubt – A Parable, by John Patrick Shanley
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The setting is a Catholic school in the Bronx, New York. It is 1964, a time of explosive social change that is challenging the established church. Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the principle of St Nicholas school is a no-nonsense, disciplinarian of the old school, dedicated to her duties to teach and protect the children, and obedient to her faith and the church. But she has doubts. Not about her faith or her views of the world, but about the school pastor, Father Flynn, and his relationships with the boys in the school, or more specifically with one boy: 12-year-old Donald Muller, who has only recently arrived at St Nicholas and happens to be the first and only black child in the school. Sister Aloysius is determined to air her doubts and pursues a sequence of enquiries that rocks the school community as well as her own certainties.
This is John Patrick Shanley’s disturbing and moving play, Doubt, which in the precise psychological orchestration of the relationships between its principal characters challenges us all to question our certainties. The play was first produced off-Broadway in New York in November 2004, before transferring to Broadway in March 2005. It won the Tony Award for Best Play, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that year, and was made into a film in 2008 written and directed by the play’s author and starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. As we record this episode it is being revived at the Chichester Festival Theatre with Monica Dolan, Sam Spruell, Jessica Rhodes and Rebecca Scroggs delivering stunning performances.
I am delighted to be joined by Monica Dolan, who shares her insights from playing Sister Aloysius in the Chichester production.
Monica Dolan
Monica Dolan is an Olivier and Bafta award-winning actor, whose work spans television, film and stage. She won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 2019 West End production of All About Eve, a Bafta Award for her unforgettable performance as Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult on ITV in 2011, and a Bafta nomination for Best Supporting Actress in A Very English Scandal alongside Hugh Grant.
Her recent work in theatre includes Doubt at the Chichester Festival Theatre, The Shrine for the Talking Heads Series at The Bridge, and Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ critically acclaimed Appropriate and The Same Deep Water as Me, both at the Donmar Warehouse. Television highlights include Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, Black Mirror, The Witness for the Prosecution, The Casual Vacancy and W1A. Recent feature films include Days of the Bagnold Summer, The Dig, Rialto, Official Secrets , Eye in the Sky, Pride and The Falling. Monica also wrote and starred in her own play The B*easts, which transferred to the Bush Theatre in London after an award-winning run at the Edinburgh Festival.
Recommended Play
Monica recommended:
Appropriate by Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and,
Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
The Footnotes to our episode on Doubt include observations on the cat and mouse duel between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn, and the journey for Sister James from innocence to doubt and confusion.
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Douglas
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
110 – Our Town by Thornton Wilder
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Playwright Edward Albee described Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as “the greatest American play ever written.” In fact Wilder’s quintessential portrait of rural America in a bygone time has somehow transcended its iconic American setting to become a universal meditation on mortality, community, and how we live our individual lives, wherever that may be.
The play premiered on Broadway in 1938, winning Wilder the Pulitzer Prize, and it has been a staple of school, amateur and stock performance ever since. In fact, according to critic John Lahr writing in the introduction to the text of the Penguin edition, “the play is performed somewhere in the world every day.”
Howard Sherman, author of Another Day’s Begun – Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century, joins me to explore this American classic.
Michael Sheen as the Stage Manager in Our Town, Welsh National Theatre, photo by Helen Murray.
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