Sun.. Feb. 18

 Economical, forceful, and, yes, full of doubt. Those are the thoughts you walk away with after seeing Tony Award-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt," which wraps up at the Colonial Theatre Sunday Feb. 18. It stars ART vet Cherry Jones, reprising her Tony Award-winning Broadway role. Set in a Catholic school/church in 1964, it pits Jones' Sister Aloysius against Chris McGarry's Father Flynn. She is all rules-and-regs - "Innocence is a form of laziness," she says - made of stone, quite possibly the caricature of the Mother Superior of the time. (Lord knows, we met a few in our day.) Her naive nun-teacher Sister James says of the students, "They all seem to be terrified of you." "Yes, that's how it works," replies Sister Aloysisus. But she's not quite that hardened. In her stern nature, perhaps, she's the Catholic equivalent of the Army D.I. It's the way she shows she cares, the way she builds character. To complicate matters a bit, she says she doesn't like secular Christmas music, but listens on an earphone to a confiscated radio - news, you see, not music. She also was married, but her husband was killed in World War II. And, despite her apparent coldness, she's taken an interest in the only black kid in this Irish-Italian-American school, a kid who's been abused by his father and maybe Father Flynn, who coaches basketball and wants to modernize the church.

All the signs she sees point to abuse; when she finally raises those signs to Father Flynn, his protests ring ... sort of true. Or maybe, as she suggests, he's been in denial so long - he has been shuttled from parish to parish for unknown reasons - it's second-nature to defend himself that way. He protests "My reputation is at stake!" She responds "Your work in the community should be discontinued." He says the child needed a friend; she says his benevolence was not "a sensation of virtue." We doubt her; we doubt him. Darkness descends. And we leave the theater with those thoughts: What is reality? Sure, Father Flynn probably had relations with the child - that motif would dovetail with what we now sadly know about the Catholic Church, especially then. Yet, nothing has been proven.

 In the playwright's preface given to the press, Shanley asks, "Have you ever held a position in an argument past the point of comfort? Have you ever defended a way of life you were on the verge of exhausting?" You'll leave the Colonial with your mind ablaze with conundrums and contradictions. Doubt. After we saw the play we talked with McGarry ...

McGarry plays a complex character, and at various times we waver between feeling him guilty of what Sister Aloysius alleges, or. maybe, innocent. We asked what he was told by John Patrick Shanley, the playwright, and Doug Hughes, the director, about his character’s past. "The director and playwright arrived at a back story for Father Flynn," says McGarry, "but no one else was made privy to that. They have no idea, don't have a clue. If you talk to Cherry Jones, she’ll say that.’’ McGarry does note that Sister Aloysius's back story is that she had a friend whose son was abused by a priest and later committed suicide.

"Shanley wants to leave the audience with the ambiguity," continues McGarry. "In the playing of it, I was trying to maintain a certain neutrality." He says that one week while the play was on Broadway the audience was polled and it was found a quarter of them thought him guilty, a quarter of them thought him innocent, and fifty percent have doubt. Which, McGarry adds, are perfect stats.

McGarry was the standby for two months while the play was on Broadway. He got his chance to take over the role when the actor playing Flynn, Ian McDiarmid, got stuck in Boston once, and then for most of a week when McDiarmid filmed a movie. On this post-Broadway run, McGarry says, "We’ve done it 100-125 times and I’ve never done a run that long. I thought ‘Am I going to want to put a gun in my mouth after three months?’ But I love it, I look forward to it. Not only to play that character but to do it opposite Cherry Jones. Pinch me. I can’t believe it. She feels the same way. She shows up and is always searching for new things."

Greatest challenge? Cherry and I both struggle with wanting to be liked," says McGarry, who was raised Catholic but now attends Mass just on the big occasions. "As human beings, you want to be loved, as actors you love the applause. There’s a constant struggle to make the character softer, more likable. … (When young) I was always frightened in church. There was something so cold. I would never be spiritually adequate." In "Doubt," he says, "I can break it down and make it more about the teachings of Jesus."

The play ends its run today, Feb. 18. with shows at 1 and 4 p.m. Tickets: $87.50-$37.50

106 Boylston St., 866-523-7469 broadwayacrossamerica.com