Did Broadway Critics Thank Heaven for Doubt's Broadway Transfer?

After receiving rave reviews during off-Broadway run, Doubt has moved to the Great White Way, marking the Broadway debut of Oscar-winning scribe John Patrick Shanley. Starring Cherry Jones and Brìan F. O'Byrne and directed by Doug Hughes, the moral tale of conviction and uncertainty officially opened at the Walter Kerr on March 31. Did critics have any doubt about the success of this transfer?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Eric Grode in his Broadway.com Review: "Doubt is Broadway's most satisfying drama since Copenhagen, a terrific entertainment that challenges and comforts at the same time. And yet… John Patrick Shanley's intelligent potboiler has grown since its Manhattan Theatre Club run, and not always in a good way. From the very first moments, where Father Flynn Brìan F. O'Byrne greets his parish with a newly protracted silence, director Doug Hughes asks us to chew a bit longer on the lessons being offered. Just because these lessons are worth savoring doesn't mean the play benefits from such elongation."

Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "As written with an uncanny blend of compassion and detachment by Mr. Shanley, and as acted by the splendid Cherry Jones, Sister Aloysius is no monster from a child's nightmare…. Doubt is an unusually quiet work for Mr. Shanley, a writer who made his name with rowdy portraits of bruising love affairs. But gentleness becomes this dramatist. Even as Doubt holds your conscious attention as an intelligently measured debate play, it sends off emotional stealth charges that go far deeper." Note--The Times reprinted excerpts from Brantley's November 24 review of the off-Broadway production.

Clive Barnes of The New York Post: "Graced by two of the most deeply etched performances Broadway has seen in years--by Cherry Jones and Brian F. O'Byrne, both masterly--Doubt"is an extraordinary experience."

Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: "It is the richest piece of theater we've had in years, and in director Doug Hughes' hands, perfectly realized… The sublime Cherry Jones does not sacrifice any laughs, but makes her a towering figure. In the final moments, she also conveys the depths of Sister Aloysius' pain. Brian F. O'Byrne makes Father Flynn an old-fashioned Irish charmer, but also shows a darker, combative side when Sister Aloysius confronts him. As a young nun cowed by both Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn, Heather Goldenhersh makes her character comical and poignant. Adriane Lenox makes the boy's mother more compelling than she seemed a few months ago."

David Rooney of Variety: "John Patrick Shanley's Doubt arrives on Broadway after its sellout Manhattan Theatre Club run with all the virtues of Doug Hughes' superlative production intact and perhaps deepened. In the four months since the play's Off Broadway premiere, the original cast, formidably led by Cherry Jones and Brian F. O'Byrne, have etched their roles with even more bracing acuity, and a second viewing yields fresh resonance from this tautly structured work."

Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "The entire cast, held over from the off-Broadway Manhattan Theatre Club production, is superb… Director Doug Hughes mines the economy of Shanley's writing for all its worth. The play is only 90 minutes long, but it packs a lot into that hour and a half. There isn't a wasted word in the script, which not only tells a compelling story but puts four distinct, finely drawn characters on stage."

Elysa Gardner of USA Today: "Under Hughes' sturdy, sensitive guidance, Jones is given a pair of fine foils. O'Byrne is creepily compelling as a seemingly regular guy with an extraordinary knack for exploiting other people's emotions. His Flynn's seduction of the pliable Sister James is as unnerving as his confrontations with her more formidable superior. Heather Goldenhersh is equally convincing as the guileless, painfully awkward James, whose gentle trust offsets Aloysius' edges and, eventually, helps soften them. And Adriane Lenox lends the right note of nervous urgency to a smaller role, the mother of a boy at the school who has grown curiously close to Flynn."