Comments (0) Best Play - 2008
John Patrick Shanley's DoubtCaldwell Theatre
John Patrick Shanley's DoubtCaldwell Theatre
7901 N. Federal Highway
Boca Raton, FL 33487
561-241-7432
South Florida should be very proud. In any other year, Thom Paine, The Clean House, 9 Parts of Desire, or The Fourth Wall would have all been shoe-ins for Best Play. Alas, this was a year of staggering theater, and no show was quite so staggering as Doubt, probably the best play John Patrick Shanley ever wrote. Caldwell Theatre gave it the cast it deserved, and people filing out of the theater were heard to wonder aloud not only about the play's real meaning but about the purpose of theater in general. This year's other great plays were moving or scary or funny, but Doubt made you doubt — not just what happened in the show, but how certain you can be of anything. Shanley's script follows an old-school nun as she seeks to discover whether or not her parish priest is molesting a young pupil. At times you believe that he isn't, that he is, that he might be — and, in a few weird moments of cognitive dissonance, you believe all of these things at the same time. If peeling away our easy grasp on fact versus fiction isn't the greatest thing a show can do, we don't know what is.
