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Nikki Amuka Bird: ‘blown away’ |
Audience must judge on child abuse
DOUBT can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty,” declares Father Flynn, the young priest accused of abusing one of his pupils in John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 play Doubt: A Parable.
For actors in the Pulitzer-
winning piece, which has its UK debut at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn this week, uncertainty is also the first language, albeit one open to different translations.
“We aren’t coming to it with our own conclusions,” says Nikki Amuka Bird, who plays the mother of the allegedly abused boy.
“It’s one of those plays that totally needs the audience – we feed off how people react.
“Shanley says his intention is that the second act takes place once the play is finished – people have to make up their own minds,” she says.
Set in a Catholic church in the Bronx in 1964, the one-act play centres on the overtly pious Sister Aloysius, an old nun accusing the dynamic priest of paedophilia.
Ms Amuka Bird continues: “There’s such a fine line and we’re still working on it – you have to get the balance right between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn.”
The actor, who lives in Kilburn, concedes the subject of religion is a sticky one.
“I believe in God and I go to church but I agree with a line my character says that things aren’t black and white,” she says.
“There isn’t one right or wrong answer and the idea that one religion is more certain than another is a dangerous one.”
Nigerian-born Ms Amuka Bird has recently returned from Botswana, where she was filming Anthony Minghella’s new project, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. She plays one of the agency’s first clients, a lady who suspects her husband of an affair.
There is also a film by Dogme director Annette K Olsen, called Minor Mishaps, in the pipeline.
This is her first play in three years, but one she felt she had to take when she read the script.
“I was completely blown away,” she admits. “I hadn’t read anything like it. He’s burning to get the story out and you can feel that when you read it.”
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