It's a very simple play - four actors in total, and a spartan stage that has a very clever backdrop doing triple duty as church, the garden between the convent and the rectory, and Sister Aloysius' office. The twistiness comes in the form of the complex and varied themes in the situation, and the solid dialogue between the characters.
Sister Aloysius is the principal of a Catholic school (up to our equivalent of year 8) in the 1960s in a largely Italian-Irish Catholic district. She's tough and principled, observant and sharp. A young nun, Sister James, is newly in charge of 8b who are six months away from graduation and high school. At the beginning of the play, she has a meeting with Sister Aloysius, where she gets a dressing down of her rather enthusiastic and empathetic teaching from the much more formal older nun, and also a veiled warning to be on the lookout for anything unusual in regards to her class. Sister Aloysius won't elaborate, for fear of putting ideas into Sister James' head, but she is very insistent on asking about the welfare of their newest student, the only black kid in their midst.
Later, Sister James almost unwillingly tells Sister Aloysius that Father Flynn, the charismatic and popular parish priest, has become a mentor to the boy, calling him in for a private meeting that results in the student coming back to class seemingly upset and with alcohol on his breath. Sister Aloysius is sure this indicates that Father Flynn is having an inappropriate relationship, confirming her suspicions. Sister James is then wracked with the doubt of having told Sister Aloysius this news as she is not at all certain that Father Flynn is guilty of anything.
In a great scene, Sister Aloysius sets up a meeting between herself and Father Flynn, with Sister James as an unwilling chaperone, and confronts Father Flynn, who angrily denies the allegations, and comes up with a plausible explanation that does not implicate him except in his cover-up of a misdeed of the student's. He later manages to turn Sister James to his side completely, even as Sister Aloysius tries harder and harder to find proof that he is guilty of pedophilia. She even talks to the student's mother, only to be confronted with a very different kind of parenting - the mother knows her son is "that way" inclined, and Father Flynn is a blessing because he spends time with her bullied child, and she refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing by the priest.
Up to this point, we are definitely asked to sympathise with everyone but Sister Aloysius, who seems to be putting on an almost hysterical witchhunt against a man who appears to be very noble and good and hard done by. Even with the shadow of pedophilia over the whole play - the uncomfortable hindsight that there *were* many cases of hidden abuse within the Catholic school system of priests against students and altar boys in that era of 'don't ask, don't tell' - it's hard to believe that Sister Aloysius with her black-and-white sense of justice and cold exterior is in the right.
In the pivotal scene, Sister Aloysius butts heads with Father Flynn for the last time. She tells him that she talked to a nun from his last parish, that she knows this is his third parish in the last five years, that she knows he has a past of misdeeds. Father Flynn doesn't admit guilt, but she tells him she expects him to resign, and we leave the scene with him telephoning the bishop.
At the end, we find out that Father Flynn has left their parish. Sister Aloysius admits that she lied about finding out about his past parishes, but the fact that Father Flynn leaves on hearing this news is proof that he *was* guilty. However - the kick is that instead of leaving with his reputation in tatters, Father Flynn has been 'promoted' to a new parish and a new school. We leave with Sister Aloysius finally showing her compassion and human-ness, breaking down in tears as she admits that she now has doubts that she did the right thing. It's an entirely depressing ending, and yet, entirely fitting for the scope of the story and themes.
Who is the monster? For most of the play it seems to be Sister Aloysius - holding on to out of date rules, the old Roman-Catholic ways of heirarchy and starched appearances - but in the end, it's harder to say who is right and who is wrong, who is the more human and kind and compassinate and caring.
The actress playing Sister Aloysius, Jennifer Flowers, is very good. She makes her a zealot for most part, outwardly hard, but in a way that makes her revealed humanity by the end completely believable. She is the same person throughout, it just takes a deeper look and understanding to see what she does has motive in the right place. Alison Bell plays the young nun well as sweet and confused. Christopher Garbardi, as Father Flynn, slipped up a few times - accent changes, flubbing a line here and there - though he has a difficult job pulling off the likeable swagger that looks a lot more like arrogance in the safety of the patriachal church system by the end.
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