#48: “Doubt” by John Patrick Shanley
I bought a copy of this play when my Borders was going out of business. I was a fan of this play in theory before I even started reading it. First off, it was about Catholics. A lapsed one myself, I love a good play about Catholics. Second of all, I had seen the movie. I know, I’m one of those people. But for whatever reason, it took me a long while to get around to reading this one-act. (One day I came home to find this play on my coffee table with a Carroll-esque “Read Me” post-it on the cover. My former roommate was a Shanley fan in more than theory.)
I would definitely recommend this play. The dialogue is simultaneously engaging and vague, authentic and theatrical. Though, now that I’ve seen it performed with the offstage characters (in the movie, Shanley wrote in parts for the young boys of the school), I have a difficult time accepting it in this new (though not really new) and surprisingly sparse form.
