Janna Ramos-Violante wanted to do Doubt for as long as she can remember. Suddenly a few months back she panicked because she thought she might be getting too old to play the naive young nun for too much longer.
So she went into action last year and got together with Fiona Ramsay for their first of a series of collaborations with James Alexander (now replaced by James MacEwan) as the charismatic Father Flynn and James Cunningham as the director.
It was a short run at the Hilton Festival and some performances here and there, but now they’re back with a full-on theatrical release in Gauteng with a further new addition, Mwenya Kabwe, as the aggrieved mother.
The plot is based on a few circumstantial details and much intuition, set in 1964 in the St Nicholas Church School in the Bronx. The rigid-minded Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Ramsay) believes that a priest (MacEwan) has done something inappropriate to a 12-year-old altar boy named Donald Muller, the school’s only African-American student. She manipulates a pliable, inexperienced nun, Sister James, (Ramos-Violante) to assist her in monitoring the suspicious priest.
This sets up the provocative story of suspicion and suspense and as much as this is a production about performances, it is also brilliantly written by John Patrick Shanley and garnered numerous awards including a Tony Award for Best Play, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Drama Desk Award for Best New Play in 2005. And don’t confuse it with the film, adapted from and directed by the playwright – but with much less success than the play.
“I have never seen a production of Doubt,” says director Cunningham which will probably benefit the freshness of what he is going to present. It’s also his first straight play, working from a script for this master of theatre on the stage and behind the scenes. “It’s so tightly written,” he explains and watching just a few scenes in rehearsal I’m again struck by Shanley’s powerful writing.
Once he read it, Cunningham knew he wanted to direct and that this was a parable rather than a play. The characters represented certain types and the audience is asked to question their own values and world view. It’s also one of those pieces that changes with the times, because the questions and answers shift slightly. Think, for example, of race and gender and how in the past few months this has taken on gigantic problematic proportions in the US.
For Cunningham, it dictates a particular heightened style of performance. “I wanted it very heavily stylised,” he says. He, for example, has a door without walls and furniture that floats, all to add to what the script is trying to say. And he feels strongly, this is Ramsay’s time for this role. “She’s perfect,” he says.
MacEwan feels similarly about the production. Living and working in Los Angeles, he knows Ramos-Violante from Durban where they’ve worked together. He was happy to come home at this time and leaves for his brother’s wedding in Italy the day after the play closes. “The timing is perfect,” he says and was thrilled to be part of the production. “It’s the kind of work I want to do,” he says as much of his past has been musically slanted. “This is my passion though.”
Kabwe’s participation is also a pleasing one because even if she’s on stage quite briefly, it is a pivotal part.
And Ramsay loves her meaty role. “I love playing these older roles,” she says, reflecting on her recent Marlene Dietrich performance (also with Ramos-Violante), but she wants to choose the vehicle. “This play is an extra-ordinary mouthpiece for so many different things,” she says. That’s what they all love. “We are dealing in issues we all confront daily.”
From a directing point of view, you can see the cast are revelling in Cunningham’s stance.
“I wanted to test the water with rehearsals,” is his response. He could see how to manipulate the play to nudge the audience in a specific direction. “I want them to make the journey with us,’ he says. “You need to sit in that doubt.” That, as the title states, is what the play is all about. But he’s loved the process, working and trusting the script to guide him.
With this production, for example, he has MacEwan doing a Boston US accent which he believes works in a specific way. It adds toughness to the character. “You know that he’s the type who would’ve been bullied at school,” notes the director as he walks you through the backstory. That would make him empathetic to his young scholars and their difficulty of fitting in.
He’s also really surprised by how quickly the play moves which adds a specific rhythm to the storytelling. It’s going to be a thrilling encounter with all this firepower on board – from the director to the script to the cast.
l Bookings: 011 883 8606, via Strictly Tickets: 082 553 5901 or www.ticket.co.za. Doubt runs from tonight until August 15.