Theater director Saeed Dakh says his play ‘Doubt’ keeps the audiences “stuck to their seats.”
Dakh’s play is currently underway at Tehran’s Pendar Theater Hall in Nejatollahi Street. It opened on July 6 and will run through August 9, Mehr News reported.
The play is a well-known work originally titled Doubt: A Parable which was written in 2004 by American screenwriter and director John Patrick Shanley.
On November 23 of the same year, it was staged at the Manhattan Theater Club, New York. In March 2005, the production transferred to the Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway and closed on July 2006 after 525 performances.
It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. In 2008, Shanely turned it into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014) as Father Flynn and Meryl Streep, as Sister Aloysius.
“The play is about doubt and hesitation. The viewers are haunted by doubt till the very end,” Dakh said.
Doubt is a realistic work, “very different from my previous play, ‘For 10 Dollars.’ The settings at the hall are ideal for the play,” he said.
Staged last summer, ‘For 10 Dollars’ was a grotesque play written by Iranian playwright, actor and theater director Hamidreza Naeemi, 42.
Both the plays are devoid of figure forms and physical action, “but next year, I plan to stage a show based on dynamic acts,” said Dakh, 46, who is also a film actor.
Doubt is about a rigidly conservative nun who harbors suspicion against a priest. Eventually, she turns the suspicion into certainty, in a way that substantiating her judgment becomes more important than the crime itself.
“No matter what, the nun maintains her doubt against the priest. And the doubt gnaws at her soul,” said Dakh.
Narges Niksirat, Atefe Jalali, Tima Pourrahmani and Ahmad Nikpour are the cast. Nazi Partozadeh has designed the costumes.
