Review: Doubt It Not, DOUBT at Actor’s Express is Stunning
The production runs through June 22nd
By: Amanda Theriot-Greenwell May. 29, 2025
Atlantans have only just finished celebrating Easter and the recent papal placement of Leo XIV when a third gift has been bestowed upon saints and sinners alike - the new production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable, directed by Freddie Ashley at Actor’s Express.
The 2004 play is centered at St. Nicholas’ Church School in the Bronx in 1964 - post-Kennedy assassination and Vatican II but only a few years before MLK’s assassination and the Stonewall Riots. Sister Aloysius is the dour, no-nonsense headmistress of the school, overseeing her young students alongside Sister James, whom Aloysius finds to be too naive, emotional and - dare I say it - kind. Ruling above the two is Father Flynn, the young priest who, like Sister James, tries to befriend the parochial students as he teaches, much to Aloysius’s chagrin. When Sister Aloysius confides in Sister James that she suspects Father Flynn of sexual misconduct with the school’s first student of color, the titular doubt creeps in on all sides, even the audience’s.
The cast at Actor’s Express is small, but mighty. Doubt was chosen by Ashley as a specific vehicle for Atlanta theater mainstay Tess Malis Kincaid, who plays Sister Aloysius’s firm faith and judgment with immense conviction. Throughout the show, she strikes such a stern and forbidding figure that any former Catholic school student would be trembling at the thought of being sent to her office. Perhaps Kincaid is at her best when facing off against Justin Walker’s Father Flynn, both of them so very firm in their own beliefs that the audience forgets that they are actors and have not actually taken Holy Orders.
Walker makes the audience question his innocence with such skill - he is charming yet smarmy, and the audience has to wonder if he is just an average man in power with an inflated ego or a conman rapist who must be removed from his position of authority.
With such two strong figures above her, it would be easy for Sarah Velasco’s Sister James to be shoved to the side, but her immense yet subtle physicality in her performance makes her another nun the audience will believe in. And while Tiffany Denise Hobbs performs in only one scene as the mother of the potentially abused child, she does so with aplomb, giving the audience another gut-wrenching twist with her emotional revelations.
Even before experiencing the superb performance, the theatre immerses the audience in the story. Hymns and chants are playing as viewers arrive, and sisters (actual sisters, not habit-wearing) Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay are to be commended for their turntable set design. In a play of two opposing sides, it only makes sense for the theater itself to turn from one view to another and back again.
Given that the weighty subject matter is so sensitive, much of the action happens off-stage while the characters and the audience are left to ponder over the happenings (and their veracity). Even with such a talk-heavy production, the entire cast and crew comes together to keep the performance moving at such a steady clip that - despite a cast of four and only two sets - the show is engrossing on every front.
Doubt: A Parable is meant to leave the viewer questioning what they truly believe - did he do it? Is Sister Aloysius a hero? Antihero? Villain? How far should one go for what they believe in? But the production at Actor’s Express goes beyond that, exploring themes of racial divide, gender structure, tradition and modernity, and more. A play set in the 60s that premiered over two decades ago is still stunningly apt in this day and age. Theist or not, there is little doubt that every theater-goer in the city should see this show.
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