Review: Theatre
John Patrick Shanley, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Doubt, is one of modern American theatre’s greats. This fierce revival of his 1984 breakthrough, by Back of the Hand theatre company, reveals all of Shanley’s facility with language and character.
It opens with the meeting of deadbeats Danny (Edwin Mullane) and Roberta (Clodagh Downing), in a Bronx bar. As his bloodied face and fists make clear, Danny is hellfire incarnate. The seductive Roberta, a divorced young mother who lives with her parents, is similarly troubled, and burdened by a mythically charged sin. The pair’s initial interaction is barbed and fraught, yet, by the play’s end, there is a glimmer of hope that their romance may come to cleanse them of their demons.
