One of the lessons neatly contained in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt concerns how the title issue and its opposite, certainty, affects faces. Certainty closes them and shuts them irrevocably, while doubt opens faces up and loosens them into a variety of doleful expressions. For Shanley, there's no question which is the more desirable face to have or to behold. Doubt is the winner, just as the prolific dramatist intends it to be from the play's opening sermon.

Speaking of faces, three new ones are starring in the prolific dramatist's Pulitzer Prize-winning work, a crackling behind-the-sanctuary clash between the principal of a Bronx parochial school and the priest who she is convinced has [...]

[Ed. Note: David Finkle reviewed the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Doubt when it opened at City Center Stage I in November 2004. The show has now transferred to Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre, where it opened last night. Here is an edited version of Finkle's original review.]

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In Doubt, the year is 1964 and Pope Paul VI has only recently succeeded Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council and changed the face of Catholicism. He hadn't, however, quite changed the stony face of Sister Aloysius, who presides over the St. Nicholas Church School in the Bronx. The autocratic nun, played by Cherry Jones, believes in strict adherence to conservative[...]

In [...]