Doubt – Footnotes
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.
Cat and Mouse
Lia Williams, the director of the 2022 production of Doubt at the Chichester Festival Theatre, described the play as a thriller. It certainly has the tension of a crime thriller, particularly in the cat and mouse duel between the protagonists. Sister Aloysius resembles the detective or prosecutor who pursues her prime target, her suspicions based initially on not much more than her instincts. Amusingly this metaphor of the deadly game that is played out between her and Father Flynn is explicitly signalled in the film version of the play when the housekeeper bursts in on Sister Aloysius and Sister James holding a cat and the mouse that it has just killed. “It takes a cat” she declares triumphantly, to which Sister Aloysius replies thoughtfully “Yes it does”, beginning to formulate her plan to entrap the priest. In the end she catches her prey.
Here is a link to the scene in the film
Innocence
Early in the play Sister Aloysius describes the enthusiastic young teacher, Sister James, as a “very innocent person”. She believes that “innocent teachers are easily duped”, so counsels her to be more “skeptical” about the motives and behaviour of her students, and perhaps of the adults as well. Sister James has doubts about looking “at things and people with suspicion”; it feels for her as if she’s “less close to God”. It certainly sounds like a less Christian view of others. However Sister Aloysius has a darker view of humanity, borne from experience: “If I could…I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil.” Even more than that she feels it is her duty to seek out evil, even at the expense of her own innocence: “When you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in His service.”
Sister James’s hopeful view of people is not easily supplanted. She cannot conceive that anyone who had done something wrong and was confronted by it would not be repentant. Sister Aloysius advises her that she “must try to imagine a very different person than yourself” – someone not as innocent. But when Father Flynn explains the reason for his meeting with Donald Muller, she still readily accepts his account and even challenges Sister Aloysius in her persistent suspicion.
By the end of the play, Sister James, has been disabused of her innocence. She has withdrawn somewhat from the children in her class, uncertain how to relate to them. The truth about Father Flynn’s behaviour remains uncertain, but the possibility of his evil and his lying have been deeply unsettling for her. As Father Flynn himself said to her: “The truth…tends to be confusing and have no clear conclusion”. She confesses that she can’t sleep at night: “Everything seems uncertain”. She has been expelled from the garden into the real world of doubt and confusion.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
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.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – March
Before the theatres went dark this month I was lucky enough to see Caryl Churchill’s A Number at the Bridge, and spend more than seven hours in thrall to Robert Lepage’s Seven Streams of the River Ota at the National. Plus, some thoughts on what we miss when there is no theatre.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – February
Another great mix of shows this month, from Tom Stoppard’s new play, to Ibsen, Beckett and newer plays in smaller London venues.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – January
The January roundup included both classic plays, such as The Duchess of Malfi, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, as well as recent musicals Dear Evan Hansen and Girl from the North Country …
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