North Alabama Première of…"DOUBT, A PARABLE" March 6, 2009

YOU’VE SEEN THE AWARD-WINNING MOVIE…NOW SEE THE PLAY THAT STARTED IT ALL!

In "Doubt, a Parable," John Patrick Shanley’s brilliant and powerful drama—and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, Tony, Outer Critics’ Circle Award, Obie, and numerous other honors—Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Robbie Shafer), a by-the-book Bronx school principal, takes matters into her own hands when she suspects the young, progressive Father Brendan Flynn (Jason Graham) of improper relations with one of the male students.

Caught in the crossfire, the enthusiastic yet inexperienced Sister James’ (Kimberly Parker) wavering confidence regarding the facts positions her to some extent as audience surrogate, while the boy’s mother (Freda Grant-Miguel) – a person Sister Aloysius is confident will be “in her corner” – provides an unforeseen perspective that is at once poignant and paradoxical.

Directed by Jim Zieliński, with assistance by Jon Brown, the North Alabama première of "Doubt, A Parable" runs Friday-Sunday, 6-8 March and Thursday-Saturday, 12-14 March, 2009 on the MainStage at Renaissance Theatre, 1214 Meridian Street, NE in Huntsville. Evening shows are at 8:00 p.m., with matinée performances (first Sunday, final Saturday ONLY) at 2:30 p.m. The theatre is located in a renovated outbuilding associated with the Historic Lincoln Mill Village.

General admission seating is $14; get YOUR tickets for this moving, thought-provoking presentation at (256) 536-3117 (**phone manned from 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday). Recommended for Teen and Adult Audiences. Group Rates are available.

Less about potential scandal than about fascinatingly nuanced questions of moral certainty, "Doubt" is surprisingly ambiguous, steadfastly refusing to take sides. Indeed, it is the very quest for “truth” that creates deeper uncertainty.

"That rarity of rarities, an issue-driven play that is unpreachy, thought-provoking, and so full of high drama that the audience with which I saw it gasped out loud a half-dozen times at its startling twists and turns.”
– Wall Street Journal

“A writer working at the top of his craft, making the most of a muted but evocative palette in the
pursuit of truth’s shadows…Here, for the first time in a long time, is a play that is about something.”
– Chicago Tribune

"Moral certainty never seemed so suspect as in John Patrick Shanley’s evocative and beautifully crafted thriller.”
– Time Out New York

“A theatrical experience it would be sinful to miss.”
– New York Magazine

“Grade: A! A breathtaking work of immense proportion. Positively brilliant.”
– Entertainment Weekly

“Written with the sort of skillful theatrical canniness and intelligence that makes it seem almost an anomaly.”
– New York Post

“All the elements come invigoratingly together like clockwork in John Patrick Shanley’s provocative new play, 'Doubt,' a gripping story of suspicion.”
– Variety

“Blunt yet subtle, manipulative but full of empathy for all sides, the play is set in 1964 but could not be more timely...In just 90 fast-moving minutes, Shanley creates four blazingly individual people”
– Newsday

“Shanley’s superbly multi-chambered ‘Doubt’...is a full-immersion baptism, heart and head, blood and
spirit, where the characters, not the author, do the heavy lifting. Without ever allowing a character to
invest him or herself in a single uncontaminated principle, Shanley...[pulls] off provocative reversals
without a single false-bottomed contrivance. To say that ‘Doubt’ speaks to our times is to diminish
its ecumenical impact and import: it’s pure moral reasoning transmuted into suspense...”
– Entertainment Weekly