Doubt Closes The Hope

Doubt: A Parable
By John Patrick Shanley
Harry Hope Theatre
Halloween 2015
Directed by Alycia Bright Holland
 The play which premiered in 2004 takes place in a catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, less than a year after the assassination of John Kennedy, and 5 years after the Second Vatican Council that attempted to make the ritual of the church more accessible to the congregants.  Shanley’s play about a nun in a Catholic school who confronts a priest whom she believes is molesting a child in the school brings together all the elements of theatre.  The script has already proven itself to be worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award for best play, and a movie staring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. This production takes the script and adds all of the other elements that are necessary to create a satisfying evening of theatre.

It is a testament to the skill of the director that all of the actors are on the same tonal page while expressing a wide range of emotions. The blocking is both natural and unobtrusive but audience members who take the time to notice will see that Alycia Bright Holland’s experience as a dancer and choreographer helped her give the actors blocking that reveals character and advances the plot. The whole show is understated, subtle, and insightful.  It has a wide range of emotions.

Maureen McDonnell who plays the lead character, Sister Aloysius, uses her voice to great effect.  All of the actors, but especially McDonald, manage to reach the last row without shouting, and express great emotion without sounding shrill or out of control.   McDonnell’s face, set off by her nun’s habit, is a kaleidoscope of restrained emotion.

Corey Lorraine as Father Flynn changes his attitude as the scenes progress and leaves it open to us to decide if he is innocent or guilty of the sins that he is accused of by Sister Aloysius.

Stephanie Madden, as the younger more innocent Sister James, is torn apart by her wish to avoid evil, and her responsibility to fight against it. Her emotions often ripple across her body before she speaks.

Charliece Salters, as Mrs. Muller, brings the quiet intensity and desperate dignity to the role of Mrs. Muller, the mother of the boy who either was, or was not, molested by the priest.

The sound design is simple and well executed, with just enough reverb in the microphone to give us a sense of being in church during a homily.  

Scenic Designer Kristen Morgan, with the help of Technical Director & Production Manager F. Chase Rozelle III, give us a multilevel set with doors, window, and scrims that carry us to several locations and times.

The lights, by Jeffrey E. Salzberg, set the mood and keep everyone in focus.  In the church scenes,  downlights over the audience bring us in as part of the congregation. He also places a soft special on the Crucifix in Sister Aloysius’s office that helps remind us of the authority under whom all of these negotiations are taking place.

It should also be noted that Black Op Ninja, Aspasia Daniolos, operating away from the stage, was so subtle as to be absolutely invisible.

Everything comes together in an organic whole that results in a satisfying and insightful, and emotionally troubling, night at the theatre.

The Harry Hope Theatre closes forever at the end of the run of the Alycia Bright Holland production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt.

As Hickey, in Harry Hope’s Saloon, in O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh says,

             “You’ll be in a today where there is no yesterday or tomorrow to worry you.”

12 Bars For Ramblin' Burt

Ramblin’ Bert Will Never Die.

One of my proudest moments was when I won a CD from Ramblin’ Bert.  I was listening to his blues show on WECS, the radio Station of Eastern Connecticut State University, and he had a contest.  First caller to identify the song wins the CD.  I called and won.  WOW!  He signed it for me and it sits proudly in my music collection. Ramblin’ Burt Cournoyer was a Blues connoisseur.  He could feel the sound, and he could share that feeling with us.  Now he’s sharing a mighty bass line with the heavenly choir.  

Born Alfred Bertram Cournoyer, in Webster, Massachusetts on December 29, 1938 he used a shortened form of his middle name as part of his radio handle.  We lost him on October 25, 2014.

He had an encyclopedic knowledge of Blues, from early roots music to contemporary, up and coming acts.  He was active in the Connecticut music scene and the Connecticut radio world.  It helps to understand the Blues if you live near a river.  
He started spinning sounds on WECS in the late 1980s.  Ramblin’ Burt would listen to blues anywhere and he’d talk about them anywhere:  bars, festivals, concerts, and even Elks Club talent nights.   

He was a stop on the blues circuit and everyone wanted to be interviewed by Ramblin’ Burt.  He had a gravelly voice and a Northern Connecticut Border accent that just went perfectly with the music he played.

J. Z. Zatowski of WECS tells us that he was instrumental in developing the blues library at the station.  “The Blues will be a little bit bluer without Ramblin’ Burt,” said Zatowski.  The Connecticut Blues community shares the sense of loss that must be felt by his family. His life enriched us all.  
There’s something about the Blues, something about rivers, and something about Ramblin’ Bert;  they just keep on rollin’.

ECHOS: VOICES FROM THE CHURCH FARM

Written and Directed by J.J. Cobb

6 & 7 May 2011

Joe Zaring Center for the Performing Arts

at The Church Farm, Ashford CT

review: Edmond Chibeau

This site specific performance piece brings to light the history and significance of the Church family and their farm in the ‘Quiet Corner” of Connecticut. The work is performed as a “promenade” in which the audience moves from one playing area to another. The individual scenes are “looped” so that the actors do a scene and then take a very short break and then do it again. In this way the audience can stroll around the property and see the scenes in any order.

The culmination of the piece is a Performance Art manifestation in which the performers and audience thread ropes and strings across a series of white posts that have been stuck in the ground as a way of, “joining your memories with ours.”

Cobb’s skill as a director and her sensitivity to the nuances of human interaction make this, not just a documentary history of Americana, but a meditation on the joys and tribulations that echo across the generations on a particular New England family farm. Much like content on the internet, this play is “distributed” among nodes, of the front lawn, the back porch, the pond, and the barn. The scenes take place at various times between 1872 and 1948, with a Performance Art coda in the infinite present.

Each scene is a multiplier of the scenes taking place around it. The scenes are not a sequence but a distribution. They interact in a variable calculus that reveals a different experience for each viewer. Although it is sometimes funny, the play is neither clever nor facile. It is a compassionate look at key frames in the human history of a particular New England place.

J. J. Cobb uses primary source documentation and draws on the work of historian, Dr. Barbara Tucker and archivist, Tara Hurt, as well as many other academic and theatrical resources, to create a human document that speaks through time and place.

The play is produced by the Performing Arts Department, with the assistance of many institutions and individuals including the Institutional Advancement department of Eastern Connecticut State University.