February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
This Saturday, “Doubt,” stands to win eight categories at the 58th annual Tony Awards, which will take place in Radio City Hall.
With his handsome physique and debonair smirk, there’s no doubt Shanley will look every inch the distinguished playwright on the night. In his youth, however, Shanley was more accustomed to breaking behavioral boundaries than artistic ones.
Born in 1950 to immigrant Irish parents, Shanley grew up in the Bronx, where he became better known for creating scandal with actions rather words.
Shanley was expelled from both elementary and high school and banned from the St. Anthony’s hot lunch program for life.
Nevertheless, he obtained a place in at New York University to study Educational Theater. It wasn’t long before he found himself on academic probation, however, and the NYU board instructed him to appear before a tribunal if he wished to return to college.
Instead, Shanley left and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, but later returned to NYU to finish university on the G.I. Bill. He graduated in 1977 as valedictorian.
After college, Shanley quickly earned a reputation as a talented playwright with the ability to master a diverse range of genres, whilst writing in plain, everyday language.
Shanley’s first play, “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” which recently enjoyed a successful revived run on Broadway, received critical acclaim and was later adapted for the screen in a French language film entitled “Papillions de Nuit.”
In 1987, his debut screenplay, “Five Corners,” won the Special Jury prize at the Barcelona Theatre Festival.
However, Shanley’s big breakthrough came later that year when he wrote the screenplay for “Moonstruck,” which went on to win several Academy wards and earned him an Oscar and a Writers Guild of America Award for “Best Original Screenplay.”
Later screenplays for films like “The January Man,” did not have the same impact, whilst the 1990 big budget movie “Joe Versus the Volcano,” which Shanley also directed, was a box office flop.
Later, his screen adaptations of Piers Paul novel “Alive,” based on an infamous plane crash in the Andes mountains and Michael Crichton’s “Congo,” received praise that was warm, but not spectacular.
Most critics say that that Shanley’s strength lies in theater, where his plays have dominated on Broadway throughout their runs.
“Playwriting has continued to make my screenwriting possible,” he said last year.
“Without that constant feedback from the audience, writing can become ungrounded. Audiences show up too late in cinema; you don’t get a chance to fix it after they get there.”
His diversity in terms of theme and style has rendered it impossible to assign his plays to one genre, but Shanley’s naturalistic styles and themes has won him comparisons with the great Irish-American writer Eugene O’Neill.
Amongst Shanley’s biggest Broadway successes have been “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow,” “Savage in Limbo,” “Beggars in the House of Plenty,” “Welcome to the Moon,” “Where’s My Money?” and “Dirty Story.” His last production, “Sailor’s Song,” ran concurrently with “Doubt” on Broadway last year to critical acclaim.
Shanley’s mixed fortunes in Hollywood have strengthened the notion that stage is where his heart lies. His 1993 play “Four Dogs and a Bone,” was a biting satire of the studio filmmaking process, strengthening that notion further.
“Whenever I sit down to write about Hollywood, two themes come up repeatedly: the animal kingdom and ancient Rome,” he told one journalist.
“It had to do with this ancient Roman idea of the constant power struggles, of the stabbings and the poisonings, of Brutus versus Julius Caesar. At the end of the story, the ground is littered with bodies. That always reminded me of Hollywood.”
However, fans and detractors alike agree that Shanley has finally won the battle with “Doubt.”
A play that began as a small, off-Broadway production in the Manhattan Theater Club, the Clerical Abuse drama, set in a 1960s Bronx Catholic school, reopened at the Walter Kerr Theater in April to rave reviews.
“Doubt has won “Best Play,” at the New York Outer Critics Awards, the Obie Awards and the Lucille Lortel Awards.
Last week, the play picked up five Drama Desk awards. Irish lead actor Brian F. O’Byrne and director Doug Hughes have been continuously singled out for their outstanding performances.
For Shanley, however, winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for drama was the culmination of his achievement with “Doubt.”
“Winning the Pulitzer Prize was a high point for me, that really blew me away,” Shanley said in an interview with the Echo.
“Shanley is a devoted and meticulous playwright that strangely was never in the limelight until this play came along,” said New York Times critic and columnist Frank Rich.
“He’s been wildly underrated until now – I think it’s long overdue.”
Friends say that Shanley is fun loving, mildly eccentric with a great sense of humor. He also has a sensitive side, as one interviewer found out when they asked Shanley why he had been kicked out of so many educational institutions. He allegedly burst into tears and said he had no idea.
“He’s the very best company, an enlivener of the day and night,” according to “Doubt,” director Doug Hughes, who has known Shanley for more than 20 years.
When Shanley was manager of the Manhattan Theater Club, Hughes remembered how they would sit for hours in a small caf