Not a book, but a play -- so sue me.

Setting the drama in 1964 also means that Doubt presents the Church's struggles over authority and renewal, struggles prompted by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Sister Aloysius is definitely 'old school;' she believes that proper penmanship is next to godliness and that the best tool for educating children is knocking some fear into them. She is unsettled by Father Flynn, the new parish priest who wants to knock the dust off the church, wants it to join the neighbrohood as a part of the 'family.'

The play becomes a test of wills between priest and nun. She suspects Father Flynn has already molested a young boy, but her efforts at finding proof are hampered by traditional church hierarchy.

Flynn: You have to stop this campaign against me!

Sister: You can stop it at any time.

Flynn: How?

Sister: Confess and resign.

Flynn: You are attempting to destroy my reputation. But the result of all this is going to be your removal, not mine.

Sister: What are you doing in this school?

Flynn: I am trying to do good!

As a play, Doubt could probably succeed with little more than three chairs and a desk onstage. It doesn't really need much; it's an efficient little engine (four characters, 90 minutes). But WaterTower Theatre is one of the great theatrical spaces in North Texas; you could stage almost anything there. So, as if to justify presenting such a small-scale drama in the space, director Terry Martin has had designer John Hobbie force a minor basilica on to the stage. It's impressive but hardly necessary.

As Father Flynn, Regan Adair has an easy charm, a telling, enigmatic distance - and a variable, light Irish accent. For her part, Nancy Sherrard plays the chilly Sister Aloysius like a comic dowager out of Oscar Wilde, all imperious harrumphs and frowns. Sherrard is best when her over-rich theatrical delivery is stripped away in the play's finest scene, a taut confrontation with the young boy's mother, strongly played by M. Denise Lee.

Doubt - as in 'beyond a reasonable doubt' - deals in suspicions and evidence. No trial actually happens in Doubt, but it's very much in the tradition of the courtroom drama. It's smart and trim, but I must respectfully lodge a dissent against the play's title -- and what many people, including Shanley himself apparently, believe the play is about. Audiences are supposedly torn over who is right, Father Flynn or his accuser. Our doubts are embodied in a flighty young nun, Sister James (Jessica Wiggers), who wants to believe the sympathetic priest though she fears Sister Aloysius is right. Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius fight for her (and the audience's) faith.

But that's not how Doubt actually plays in the seats. I think audiences decide whether the child abuse charges are true fairly early on. We actually feel little doubt here -- recall what I said about how it's impossible to unlearn what we've learned. We may sympathize with Sister James' quandary (altough Wiggers plays her enough on the edge of hysteria that she loses quite a bit of that fellow feeling). But I don't think anyone really feels 'torn' between two different claims on the truth.

There is suspense in the play, but it's not over who is right. It's over who will win, over how they will win and what it will cost them. And what it may cost the Church. That's why Shanley's ending is disturbing - and why audiences in North Texas can grimly appreciate it. Sister Aloysius confesses her own doubts -- not over Flynn's guilt but over whether her Church is worth saving anymore, because what happens to Father Flynn clearly points to what happened to the Catholic Church in places like Dallas in the 1990s.

If you wish, you can hear me deliver the radio version of this review here