Sam Reid, Pamela Rabe Anchor STC's Doubt: A Parable
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- Sydney Theatre Company is one of the few Australian performing arts outfits to post a surplus amid cancelled musical tours, shrinking orchestras and rising production costs, underpinned by recent hits including The Talented Mr Ripley and this year's An Iliad starring David Wenham.
- Doubt: A Parable, John Patrick Shanley's 1964-set Bronx Catholic school drama, runs at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney until 2 August, mounted with a lean four-person cast that the review says promises "impactful theatre on a relatively lean bottom line."
- Sam Reid (ABC's The Newsreader, AMC's Interview with the Vampire) plays Father Flynn with charm and warm confidence, drawing gasps at least twice as his demeanor shifts, while Pamela Rabe is a "formidable" Sister Aloysius whose final moments nonetheless feel disconnected from what came before.
- Director Marion Potts, freshly returned to the stage after serving as chief executive of Performing Lines, delivers a "crisp, smartly unsentimental" staging on Bob Cousins' revolving set with Damien Cooper's lighting — but the review finds it "a little too brisk," skipping the discomfort that makes the play work.
- The play's 2005 Broadway premiere won four Tony Awards and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for drama; the 2008 film adaptation, starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis, earned five Academy Award nominations.
- Zindzi Okenyo delivers "a wonderfully layered performance" as the student's mother in what the review calls one of the play's knottiest scenes, though the production moves through it too quickly to let her work fully cut through.
Why it matters: STC is bucking the broader Australian performing arts downturn — cancelled tours, shrinking orchestras, rising costs — by staging a lean, Pulitzer-winning four-hander that lets marquee TV names carry a production accessible to tighter budgets. For audiences wary of theatre pricing in a cost-conscious moment, the staging shows how a small cast and a strong script can still deliver a rare hit.
