John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award®-winning Best Play has blazed back to Broadway starring Academy Award® and Tony nominee Amy Ryan and Tony winner Liev Schreiber. This “excellent new revival, directed by Scott Ellis, affords the pleasure of watching two supremely good actors going toe to toe” (The Wall Street Journal). “Ryan and Schreiber are electric on Broadway (Entertainment Weekly).”.
The fireworks begin as the exacting principal of a Bronx Catholic school—feared by students and colleagues alike—suspects improper relations between a charismatic priest and a student. She’s forced to wrestle with what’s fact, what’s fiction, and just how far she’ll go to expose what she sees as the truth. As the New York Post says, “It keeps the audience guessing and second-guessing through the play’s famous final line.”
Director Scott Ellis is happy not to push past the expected. David Rockwell’s set dutifully revolves between stony, ivy-twined cloister courtyard and massy mahogany office. Ryan wears the same severe bonnet and glasses that Streep and Cherry Jones wore before her. Mikaal Sulaiman’s straightforward sound design gives us crows cawing, children at play, and kyries between scenes. And, while one needn’t belabor the point, seven of the eight-person central production team are men. The famous faces onstage are new, but much of what’s been packaged here feels intensely, and intentionally, the same as it ever was.
Even if its principal generates less interest, however, the play grows richer every time you see it. On this latest visit—my fifth encounter with Doubt, including the 2008 film with Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman—I wondered if Ellis’s revival, in deference to modern sensibilities, took too clear a position on what has happened between Father Flynn and Donald. But then I remembered that my own convictions on that subject have changed each time I’ve seen some version of this work. My reactions may well say more about me than the production, and they exemplify why it remains so satisfying to sit in the dark with a crowd of people also wrestling with Doubt, divided perhaps in our suspicions but united in a liberating bond of uncertainty.
Digital Rush
Price: $48
Where: On the TodayTix app.
When: 9am on the day of the performance
Limit: Two per customer
Information: Subject to availability.
2005 | Broadway |
Broadway Transfer Broadway |
2008 |
Original Motion Picture |
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2017 | West End |
London Revival at Southwark Playhouse West End |
2024 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Doubt: A Parable |
2024 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Doubt: A Parable |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Doubt: A Parable |
2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Liev Schreiber |
2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Quincy Tyler Bernstine |
2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Amy Ryan |
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