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It could be a timely argument for live theatre, that rare opportunity to breathe the same air and contemplate the same story in a fractured, screen-in-your-nose culture. The sermon concludes by preaching the power of doubt, which we can easily recognize as an endangered virtue in our era of polarization, conspiracy and mobs in both virtual and real life.
But uncertainty is curiously thin in the first Broadway revival of “Doubt,” starring Liev Schreiber and Amy Ryan, which opened at the Todd Haimes Theater on Thursday. Asked whether Schreiber’s inscrutable Father Flynn has made advances toward the only black student at a Bronx Catholic school, a suspicion that becomes certainty in the mind of Ryan’s acerbic Sister Aloysius, the answer seems all too obvious.
Likewise, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where Tobias Menzies plays a small-town teacher accused of sexual misconduct by a lying girl in “The Hunt,” the man’s innocence is a given as the drama generates heat from a “Crucible”. -Arson in the style of his reputation.
The context for this kind of tug-of-war has changed dramatically in the nearly 20 years since John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning “Doubt” premiered on Broadway. Today, some have a reflex instinct to side with a less powerful accuser, while others are highly sensitized to the consequences of so-called cancellation.
It is, in many ways, an ideal moment to upend the audience’s assumptions and leave us completely disoriented. Which makes both productions, with their clear tilt of the balance toward the plight of the maligned men, seem, if not reactionary, at least a little boring. Where is the excitement of a trial when we already know that there has been no crime?
Scott Ellis’s staging of “Doubt,” for Roundabout Theater Company, lavishes Catholic-level attention to superficial details. An imposing rectory, designed by David Rockwell, pivots to house the putative principal’s office and a serene courtyard where conversations are ex parte. Kenneth Posner’s dappled lighting suggests a heightened air of tension, casting a gloom underfoot even in mid-afternoon. (Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound grows less subtly with meaning.)
But Shanley’s 90-minute quartet, subtitled “A Parable,” could just as easily be performed on a blank stage, so thickly its language glows with philosophical enigmas, particularly in its opening scenes. (There’s comedy too, intensified here so that the story’s quick, serious turn seems overly sharp.) Supporting performances by Zoe Kazan, as the doe-eyed sister trapped by her own good intentions, and Quincy Tyler Bernstine, as the circumspect boy. mother, they are excellent.
But the main performances are poorly calibrated. Schreiber’s gruff, salty Flynn lacks a menacing underbelly, like a rock without worms writhing beneath it. Ryan, a last-minute replacement for Tyne Daly, who withdrew from the production for health reasons, wields Aloysius’s iron-fisted quips like daggers. But he seems to abandon them just because, without fear or disgust that what he believes could be true.
The lie that fuels “The Hunt” is a blatant one, made by Clara (Kay Winard in the performance I attended), a relentless five-year-old who mischaracterizes a scene we just witnessed between her and Lucas de Menzies, the only . teacher at his school. Clara’s motives presumably stem from a troubled family life, and indeed the play, adapted for the stage by David Farr from the film by Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm, is concerned with the fallibility of the domestic order. No family structure can truly dominate anyone’s desire for love.
In case the story didn’t make it clear, director Rupert Goold stages the Almeida Theater production in and around a revolving glass house, a visually striking but overdetermined design by Es Devlin. As a completely sympathetic Lucas (Menzies is fantastic) faces a completely unjustified fall from grace, a growing drumbeat of primitive masculinity invades from the rural periphery (think of the flannel-clad, ghoulishly horned city dwellers a la “Yellowjackets”). ”, dressed in Evie Gurney outfits).
The point seems to be that the sexes are inseparable from their essential natures. In other words, boys will be boys and women will be deceitful. It’s a fairy tale hardly worth repeating today without an incisive dose of doubt.
Doubt, by John Patrick Shanley. Directed by Scott Ellis. Ensembles, David Rockwell; costumes, Linda Cho; lighting, Kenneth Posner; sound, Mikaal Sulaiman. Approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. Through April 21 at Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 West 42nd St., New York. roundabouttheatre.org.
The hunt, by Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm, adapted by David Farr. Directed by Rupert Goold. Sets, It’s Devlin; lighting, Neil Austin; costumes, Evie Gurney; sound, Adam Cork. Approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes. Through March 24 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. stannswarehouse.org.