Kimberly King casts a shadow in `Doubt’

Kimberly King (with Cassidy Brown as Father Flynn) plays the stern Sister Aloysius in the TheatreWorks production of Doubt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by John Patrick Shanley. Photos by David Allen

For a while, Kimberly King and her husband, Ken Grantham, were sort of the first couple of Bay Area theater.

From their Berkeley base, they performed all over the place – Berkeley Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Marin Shakespeare Festival, you name it. They acted, they directed.

Then, like so many great local actors, they moved to Los Angeles and then to New York. When that got old, they decided to head back to the West Coast, but instead of returning to the Bay Area, they made a surprising decision. They headed to Washington, but not to Seattle. Four years ago they settled in the Puget Sound area and run the Green Cat Guest House and Bed and Breakfast just outside of the tiny town of Poulsbo.

But they have not been so consumed by their careers as innkeepers that they have forsaken the stage. They've managed to work at the Intiman and A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, and they occasionally hit the road.

King made a memorable local appearance two years ago as Mary Tyrone in San Jose Repertory Theatre's Long Day's Journey Into Night, and she's back to tackle the role of Sister Aloysius in TheatreWorks' production of Doubt, John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, now at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto.

"At first glance, Sister Aloysius can seem like kind of a stock character. We've seen terrifying nuns through the ages," King says. "But the core of the sister, and the core of the play itself, is the central humanity of her character. Her belief is that she is doing good, trying to protect the children she deeply loves at her school, trying to make the world better. That's what saves the character from being a stereotype. That's also the place where we can hold up the mirror to ambition, human ideals, human conflict and, finally, human doubt. She may seem embedded in her belief system, but the playwright won't let her stay there very long."

Bay Area audiences had the chance to see Doubt two years ago when the Broadway tour, starring Cherry Jones in her Tony Award-winning role of Sister Aloysius, played the Golden Gate Theatre. King did not see that performance and so brings her own talent and background (she's from Irish and Lutheran stock) to the role.

"Sister A is a woman to be admired and feared," King says. "She is fiercely intelligent, passionate in her beliefs. Her guiding light is the care and nurturing, in her own way, of her flock, her children. She cares about them very deeply. Cares about the idea of education very deeply. Her strict and stringent guidelines remind me of maestros I've worked with. I'm not naming names, but they share a passionate belief they can affect a positive outlook in the world with standards that are important to adhere to. The question is whether those standards get in the way of other observations, other mindsets, let in other ways of being."

In the play, Sister Aloysius must deal with a priest, Father Flynn, who may have abused one of the students. The incident, which also demonstrates a clash between the old ways and the new ways in the church in the early '60s, around the time of Vatican II, shakes the Sister to her core.

"There's a courtyard between the rectory and the convent, and as the Sister says, `It might as well be the Atlantic Ocean.'" King says. "That courtyard is an interesting symbol. Sister Aloysius is older than Father Flynn, maybe by about 20 years. She's the old and he represents the new. Shanley doesn't come down on either side. He holds up the prism that allows the facets of these people and the world outside to show. Part of the magnetism of the play is that the audience needs to decide, to have the discussion, formulate the views. There are no rights, no wrongs, no easy answers, no easy conclusions. Doubt is such a wonderful piece of writing. My respect for it grows every day."

King is reveling being back in the Bay Area – one of her favorite places, she says – and says she and her husband moved to Puget Sound because, as Sister Aloysius says, "Life is perhaps longer than you think and the dictates of the soul more numerous."

"Our souls dictated Puget Sound," she says. "And they really do have 350 days of clouds and rain there. But I'm a California girl at heart. Some time, every day, we think about coming back here."

For more with Kimberly King, please visit my Examiner.com theater page here.

TheatreWorks' Doubt begins previews tonight (July 16), opens Saturday (July 19) and continues through Aug. 10 at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Tickets are $26-$64. Call 650-903-6000 or visit www.theatreworks.org.