Doubt at FUSION Theatre

When conscience confronts obedience,
something has to give.

FUSION Theatre Company opens its 2007-2008 season with the New Mexico premiere of Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Doubt, a parable, on Thursday, August 23rd at 8:00 p.m at The Cell Theatre. Opening night features a catered reception by Ambrozia at 7:00 p.m. Reservations are highly recommended.

Due to extremely high demand for tickets to DOUBT, FUSION Theatre Company has added two shows to our run! "We would add more," announced Executive Director Dennis Gromelski, "but all four actors are in great demand and have other commitments after our scheduled close date, September 16."

The two additional opportunities to see DOUBT are Saturday, 9/15 at 2PM and Sunday, 9/16 at 6PM. Patrons are highly encouraged to use our new on-line ticketing to confirm availability and to purchase tickets now. Just click here:

"We're grateful to the actors, technicians and stage manager and to Equity for permitting us to add these two shows," Gromelski added.

The time is 1964. The Civil Rights Act has just been implemented, riots erupt in Harlem, the Vietnam War is escalating, NASA is in a technological race with the Soviet Union, Second Vatican Council convenes, and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement explodes on to the scene – the world seems to be moving fast and furiously and many begin to doubt the world of the past as well as what the world is becoming. This is the year that sets Patrick Shanley’s play Doubt. Described by Shanley as a “parable,” his play draws parallels with our contemporary post 9/11 world as it seems to be moving fast and furiously. Focusing on a Catholic nun working within a parochial school and her surfacing doubts about the relationship between a young priest and a student, the play underscores Shanley's idea that “deep down under the chatter [of our time] we have come to a place where we know that we don’t know…anything.”

Directed by Jacqueline Reid, Doubt comes directly to Albuquerque from an extremely successful run on Broadway. The cast features FUSION favorites Ross Kelly, Laurie Thomas, Rachel Tatum, and Angela Littleton. Doubt continues through September 16th with Thursday through Saturday performances at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. For tickets and information call 766-9412 or go click "TIX" on the menu to the left. Tickets are $25 for general admission, $20 for students and seniors (add $5 for gala opening night performance). Thursday performances (excluding opening night) feature a $10 student rush (with valid I.D.) and $18 actor rush (with professional resume.) The first Sunday, August 26, is a pay-what-you-wish performance. Group discounts are also available. Free parking is plentiful. The Cell is located at 700 1st St. N.W. (just west of Broadway and south of Lomas.) Click on "Location" menu item above for a map.

"The best play I saw this year was John Patrick Shanley's award-winning Doubt with the FUSION Company at the Cell. Under Jacqueline Reid's direction, each of the four cast members gave a memorable performance in a complicated and challenging play.

In her single scene, Angela Littleton was haunting and compelling. As a naive nun, Rachel Tatum had to do a lot of reacting, and she was convincing in her character's growing concern for the ugly innuendos at the heart of the play. Laurie Thomas conveyed so much as the strict parochial school principal— foibles and faults, strength and dedication. Ross Kelly's striking face virtually shone above his character's clerical collar. Kelly combined charm, anger, indignation and hurt in his complex characterization. It was his best performance to date."
Barry Gaines, year-end summary, Albuquerque Journal

Barry Gaines, review, August 26, 2007 (on-line), Albuquerque Journal:
"On the day when letters were published indicating that Sister Teresa was plagued with uncertainties of faith all through her saintly life, FUSION Theatre Company opened the regional premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. It is an unpretentious but brilliantly constructed play that examines the relationship of doubt and faith in a Catholic setting.

In 2005 Doubt won five Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; the FUSION production at the Cell is, I believe, Albuquerque’s best of the year. Doubt is a four-character play set in St. Nicholas Catholic Church and School in the Bronx in 1964. Handsome, charismatic Father Flynn preaches parabolic sermons and coaches basketball. Sister James is a passionate teacher anxious to connect with her students and convey her enthusiasm for history. Sister Aloysius is the school principal, a firm disciplinarian who favors formality and distance in the classroom. Sister Aloysius questions the motives for Father Flynn’s interest in Donald Muller, the school’s only Negro student, and enlists Sister James in a campaign to spy out the truth of the relationship. Donald’s mother is questioned by Sister Aloysius. The insightfully crafted script moves intelligently from scene to scene, subtly suggesting without providing easy answers. Not until the play’s last words is the story complete. And that is all the plot you will get from me.

FUSION founding member Jacqueline Reid directs this production with clean, deft strokes. Richard K. Hogle’s set and lighting designs allow the action to move smoothly from the Principal’s office—featuring a desk and chair with a large wooden cross behind—to the flanking pulpit and garden bench. Coincidently, the two nuns are in Sister Teresa’s order, the Sisters of Charity, and Cassidy Zachary costumes them in black bonnets and floor-length habits.

All four actors are brilliant. In her single scene, Angela Littleton as Mrs. Muller is haunting and compelling. A fierce advocate for her son, Littleton’s character spars with Sister Aloysius. As naïve Sister James, Rachel Tatum has to do a lot of reacting, and she is convincing in her character’s growing concern for the ugly innuendos. Ross Kelly makes an ideal Father Flynn. His striking face virtually shines above his clerical collar and his passionate commitment to his vocation is palpable. Kelly combines charm, anger, indignation, and hurt in his complex character. It is his best performance to date. Laurie Thomas has taken the full measure of Sister Aloysius. Thomas conveys her character’s foibles and faults without lapsing into caricature, and she is equally adept at suggesting the nun’s strengths and dedication. The result is a fascinating, full creation.

Playwright Shanley sent Director Reid a congratulatory email for opening night; he would have approved of the performance and the standing ovation. See Doubt.”

Amy Dalness, review, Weekly Alibi:
"No one can tell a sinner just by looking at his face. At least, not most people and not most faces. Sin has a way of making itself look attractive, appealing, sexy; and some sinners know how to wear that appeal as a mask, hiding their true nature.

That allure is what make sinners such excellent literary characters, full of unknown motives, personal convictions and nondescript torment. John Patrick Shanley takes that person and puts him into the heart of the Catholic Church in Doubt, a play that questions what we think we see.

The FUSION Theatre Company's regional premiere of Doubt at The Cell begins with a dark stage and a soft folksy-rock song, allowing the audience members to clear their minds. As the song ends, the lights come up and the friendly, attractive face of Father Flynn (Ross Kelly) smiles warmly at his congregation from behind the pulpit. Father Flynn delivers a moving sermon about loneliness and doubt, setting the tone and theme that continues throughout the story.

Sitting under the bold wooden cross above her desk, Sister Aloysius (Laurie Thomas), principal of St. Nicholas Church School in the Bronx, is visited by one of her eighth grade teachers, Sister James (Rachel Tatum). Sister Aloysius uses this unexpected visit to question Sister James about the goings on in her class, particularly if Sister James had noticed any strange behavior relating to Father Flynn. The young and inexperienced Sister James is flustered and put off by Sister Aloysius' old-fashioned views of discipline and order, and even more put off by Aloysius' absolute conviction that Father Flynn is hiding a dirty secret. Sister James eventually recalls smelling alcohol on the breath of Donald Muller, the school's first and only black student, after a meeting with Father Flynn. Sister Aloysius seizes this evidence and begins her journey to uncover the truth—for the sake of the children, no matter the cost—including questioning Donald's mother (Angela Littleton) and the man of the cloth himself.

Doubt is a masterfully written play and has garnered the accolades to prove it, including four Tony awards, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play of the Season and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, just to name a few. Shanley has created four incredibly different and rich characters. As new evidence is found or an explanation given in Doubt, it's impossible to place faith and support onto any one character long, for as surely as the next scene begins another character appeals to that trust (making the play's title work on many incredible levels). Because the characters are so strong, it takes strong actors to portray them, and, by god, the FUSION Theatre Company found some.

As the first actor on stage, Ross Kelly immediately sells the audience on his charm and charisma. Kelly delivers the kind of sermon that would draw crowds to any church at 8 a.m. Sunday morning. He's gripping, delightful and believable to a sickening level, especially as his character comes under more and more suspicion for wrongdoing.

Opposing Father Flynn's immediate likability is Sister Aloysius' immediate dislikability. Laurie Thomas’ presentation of the strict schoolmarm your mother always told you about when you were being particularly naughty is spot on without being melodramatic. Sister Aloysius' unwavering faith would take beating after beating, yet Thomas keep her conviction fresh while hinting at a deep suffering just under the surface.

Rachel Tatum's innocent Sister James seemed ready to burst from embarrassment, uncertainty, passion and unwavering goodness at any moment. Where Thomas hid Sister Aloysius' warmth under her black tunic, Tatum wears it gleaming on her face. Sister James deals with doubt of her own, and Tatum doesn't shy away from the consequences of that doubt.

While Angela Littleton’s Mrs. Muller is only on stage for one scene, it's heated and tense. Littleton's reserve and poise while under pressure from Sister Aloysius makes the moments when the facade of niceties slink away chilling, wrenching and desperate. For a moment, Sister Aloysius seemed small, and that's an accomplishment.

While anyone involved in theater will say no performance is ever perfect, it's hard to find a flaw in Doubt. The performances were fantastic, the costuming and set design dynamic, the directorial choices complemented a masterful script and there wasn't an empty seat in the house. Call ahead and reserve your seats—unlike church, there's not always room for everyone."

Jim Terr, review, KUNM-FM 89.9:
"I remember the name “John Patrick Shanley” as the writer of the Oscar-wining 1988 film, “Moonstruck.” I wasn’t as fond of it as most people, so when I saw that Shanley was the writer of a Pulitzer- and Tony-award-winning play called Doubt: A Parable, enjoying a sold-out run at the Cell Theater, I said to myself, “Well, maybe that’s why; maybe Shanley is actually more of a playwright than a screenwriter.”

But it turns out that Shanley has in fact had little recognition as a playwright, for his nearly 30 plays written in the past couple of decades. That is, until he wrote Doubt.

Twisted logic aside, seeing FUSION Theater Company’s production of Doubt is one of those peak theater experiences where a brilliantly crafted and engaging work is executed by an essentially perfect cast of wonderfully skilled actors, beautifully directed.

The setting is a parochial school in the 1960s, long before the priestly molestation scandals exploded publicly -- but obviously not before the activity was in progress. A scandal is brewing at St. Nicholas Church School. But is it really? Is the handsome father Flynn having his way with a particularly vulnerable young student, or is the highly analytical and controlling Sister Aloysius simply letting her imagination and her own bitterness run wild?

Hmmm it’s not real clear, and this fine line of Doubt keeps the audience engaged and in suspense as much as even the best murder mystery might do – perhaps even more so. What’s at stake here is reputation, a child’s life, and reality itself.

Ross Kelly plays the earnest, attractive and appealing Father Flynn. Appealing, that is, to everyone but the suspicious Sister Aloysius, played with razor-keen intensity by Laurie Thomas. The sincere Sister James (Rachel Tatum) doesn’t know quite what to believe, and just wishes all the turmoil and confusion would go away. “You would trade anything for a warm look,” Sister Aloysius admonishes her. Ouch!

In the middle of all this the child’s mother, Mrs. Muller, visits the school for a conference with Sister Aloysius, who as always has an agenda which reveals itself only after a snakelike few minutes of intense coiling before the strike. But Mrs. Muller, a flawless Angela Littleton, has a few surprises herself hidden under her at-first-compliant veneer, and the struggle and maneuvering between these two powerful, determined women is breathtaking.

It’s also on a strangely different note from the rest of the play, and it was interesting to read that this scene was actually the initial inspiration, the original vision, from which Shanley wrote the rest of Doubt.

FUSION is an Equity theater company, a professional designation which unfortunately carries with it a relatively high admission price, but for those who are able, Doubt is a powerful and unforgettable performance. Extra performances may be added to accommodate the tremendous response to this production; call the Cell Theater at 766-9412 or visit FusionAbq.org for ticket information."

Christopher Isherwood, review, New York Times:
"Doubt is as deeply, if subtly, imbued with ideas of larger resonance as any play to be seen on Broadway in the last decade. Mr. Shanley has an abiding belief that theater, despite its marginal status in popular culture (or, paradoxically, because of it), can illuminate ethical and spiritual questions that are of both immediate and eternal relevance."

David Rooney, review, variety.com:
"The extraordinary concision of Shanley's ideas is matched by the skill with which he builds suspense and metes out unexpected doses of humor and compassion. In particular to audiences now familiar with the plot mechanics -- the nun's witch-hunt, the bristling faceoffs, the ultimately hollow victory -- what emerges most remarkably is the playwright's refusal to judge his characters in any way, regardless of their flaws."

Nella Vera, review, culturevulture.net:
"Doubt is a spellbinding and expertly written new play from John Patrick Shanley. In a season awash with tepid revivals, over-amplified musicals, and Hollywood stars doing their “legit” gigs, Doubt renews your faith in the theater with an excellent story that keeps you guessing to the end...."