Monica Dolan Archives - The Play Podcast

Monica Dolan

by theplaypodcast | Feb 8, 2022 | Contributor

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.

Podcast Episode(s)

041 - Doubt - A Parable, by John Patrick Shanley

Recommended Play(s)

Monica recommended:
Appropriate by Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and
Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris

041 – Doubt – A Parable, by John Patrick Shanley

by Douglas Schatz | Feb 3, 2022 | Podcast Episodes

Monica Dolan and Sam Spruell
in Doubt at Chichester Festival Theatre 2022

041 – Doubt – A Parable, by John Patrick Shanley

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Recommended Play

Monica recommended:
Appropriate by Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and,
Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris

We have footnotes for this episode …

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.

Footnotes for Patrons

BECOME A PATRON!

Since I launched The Play Podcast in April 2020, I have managed to eschew any form of advertising or sponsorship, and I would like to continue to produce the podcast without doing so. I therefore invite you to help me to continue to make the podcast by becoming a Patron.
Additional benefits available to Patrons include Footnotes on the plays covered in the podcast, as well as exclusive access to The Play Review.

For details click here

Thank you very much for listening and for your support.
Douglas

The Texts

If you are interested in buying the play text or other related books, we’d be delighted if you choose to purchase them by following the links below. We will earn a small commission on every book you purchase, which helps to keep the podcast going. Through our selected partners Bookshop.org and Blackwell’s you will also be supporting independent bookshops. Thank you.

115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.