Theatre review: Doubt, a Parable

The Catholic Church is famous for its choirboy-abusing priests, but a lesser-known fact is that there’s also a system of religious beliefs attached to it. John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, a Parable uses the former to look into questions of the latter, in a story set in a New York convent school in 1964. Headmistress Sister Aloysius (Stella Gonet) is a stern disciplinarian who’s fiercely opposed to change, ball-point pens, the song “Frosty the Snowman,” and either teachers or students actually enjoying their lessons. Her mission to crush all the joy out of young teacher Sister James (Clare Latham) has to be interrupted as she needs her help to investigate the school priest Father Flynn (Jonathan Chambers,) whom she suspects of taking an inappropriate interest in the pupils. The school has just taken on its first-ever black student, and Flynn seems keen to get particularly close to him.

Theatre review: The Rolling Stone

Chris Urch had a miner hit* with Land of Our Fathers, which will be getting another London run later this year, and in the meantime another of his plays gets a further life (having originally played in Manchester after winning the Bruntwood Prize,) as Ellen McDougall directs Urch's look at a very different subject. The Rolling Stone takes its title from a Ugandan newspaper that takes particular glee in the country's anti-gay laws: Notoriously, it publishes the names, addresses and photos of homosexuals with the intention that they be arrested or, just as likely, lynched. It's a poisonous environment to set a gay love story, in which 18-year-old Dembe (Fiston Barek) meets Ugandan-Irish doctor Sam (Julian Moore-Cook,) and the couple start a surprisingly laid-back relationship. When Dembe's father dies, his older brother Joe (Sule Rimi) is elected pastor of their church, but not unanimously - those who object to such a young pastor will keep a particularly close eye on Joe and his family.