Doubt

Cherry Jones is either a disarming, self-effacing woman with an easy smile and a warm, down-home charm, or she's a dark and fearsome dreadnought, a monolith of cold, congealed, righteous wrath. The difference lies in whether she's herself, the 50-year-old, two-time Tony award-winning actress from Paris, Tenn., or Sister Aloysius, principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1964 in John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer-winning play, Doubt, which opens tonight at the Hippodrome. Doubt runs through May 13 at the Hippodrome Theatre, 12 N. Eutaw St. $27-$67.

There must be a starting gun that goes off as the last scene of a feature film plays out. How else to explain the stampede for the door that begins immediately, often before the credits even begin? It has always bothered me that people are in such a rush to leave. For one thing, what's the hurry? Staying a few more minutes isn't going to get anyone stuck in a traffic jam, and there can't be that many people with expiring parking meters. There's also the rudeness factor: Those of us who like to savor the experience for a few minutes, or who maybe want to check the credits for the wacky brother-in-law character, find our vision blocked by the exiting hordes.

"What do you do when you're not sure?" If you're John Patrick Shanley, you write a play, call it Doubt, and begin with exactly that line. On stage, the line is spoken by a parish priest named Father Flynn at the beginning of a sermon. Ninety taut minutes later, at the end of Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, currently at the Hippodrome Theatre, this affable priest's actions will be the subject of doubt -- and that's a good thing. It's what thought-provoking theater is all about. Doubt runs through May 13 at the Hippodrome Theatre, 12 N. Eutaw St. $27-$67.

It seems as if the majority of doubt about Maryland's quarterback is coming from outside the Gossett Football Team building, as Ralph Friedgen once again gave Jordan Steffy his vote of confidence yesterday. "I'm not disappointed to the point where I'm thinking of changing quarterbacks, I can tell you that," Friedgen said at his news conference. Friedgen began with his breakdown of Rutgers, but eventually the questions turned to his offense, about which he said, "It's a multifaceted problem we're trying to solve."

It just doesn't feel right. At a time when everyone in real life is harboring hopes and making promises for the new year, the Hollywood studios are intent on breaking every resolution they ever made about creating fresh and exciting popular art. Unless you're catching up to November or December award contenders, you'll find January is the dumping-ground month for low-expectation movies, from the pseudo-inspirational Stomp the Yard to manic action-exploitation films...

When I was growing up in Cuba in the 1960s, I went to schools with 45 students in a classroom, where we shared textbooks and spent two months out of the year working in the countryside and attending lessons in buildings with dirt floors. The country was undergoing a social revolution, with nearly a tenth of the population leaving for political exile. Everyone was poor. The great majority of the students were of color. And yet, there was never any doubt or even thought of the possibility that we would not learn.

His ability to catch the football consistently can be called into question, but no one can doubt Patrick Johnson's commitment to becoming a force at wide receiver.Johnson means business. As a rookie and second-round draft pick of the Ravens last year, he took an unusual route by signing his first contract nearly a month before training camp. Forget squeezing his team for more money. Johnson preferred moving to Baltimore early so he could hit the weight room, dive into his playbook and settle in with his new teammates.

WASHINGTON -- From a thousand lips I hear this cry of confusion: ''How can one jury find O.J. Simpson responsible for two murders when another jury already has found him not guilty?''The anger and doubt arise among Americans who expect a coherence within our system of justice that never has existed. It may challenge sanity, but for the jury in the civil trial that found Mr. Simpson liable for two brutal murders, the criminal trial where he was acquitted might as well never have taken place.

DENVER -- Now the jurors have another decision: Should Timothy J. McVeigh die?Tomorrow, the same jury that found McVeigh guilty of bombing the Oklahoma City federal building will return to the federal courtroom for the sentencing phase of the trial.In sessions that could last a week or more, jurors will hear prosecutors argue that McVeigh should be executed. And they will listen as McVeigh's lawyers plead for his life.Survivors of the bombing and relatives of the dead will take the witness stand to tell the jury about some of the lives McVeigh ruined.

PARIS -- A fascinating book called ''A Dictionary of French Intellectuals'' has just been published in France, filled with information not only on individuals but on what the editors (Jacques Julliard and Michel Winock) call ''the moments'' and ''the places'' crucial to the intellectual in France since the 19th century.Intellectuals are ordinarily thought not to exist in the United States or England. Among us, the term is employed, if at all, with an edge of embarrassment, as if to claim to be an intellectual were vaguely decadent, or un-American, or unmanly (which would seem to exempt female intellectuals but does not)

The Virgin Mary is split in two. That's the first thing the audience sees in Everyman Theatre's current production of Doubt - and we notice it even before the play begins. That long crack, running from halo to heel in the full-sized triptych, divides this mother from the holy infant dangling on her knee. Like much in this staging, it's not particularly subtle, but it effectively communicates the main themes of John Patrick Shanley's play, which picked up both the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award in 2005.

Actress Dawn Ursula will be on stage for just one scene in the Everyman Theatre production of Doubt. But the scene - a conversation between a parent and the principal of an elementary school in the Bronx in 1964 - is among the most riveting and gasp-inducing of the entire show. In John Patrick Shanley's play, which won the 2005 Tony Award, a self-righteous nun suspects that Father Flynn, a charismatic and forward-thinking new priest, is molesting the school's only African-American pupil.

CHICAGO -- Brian Roberts' long-awaited appearance at Wrigley Field generated far less buzz than the relentless offseason trade rumors that had the Orioles' second baseman all but fitted for a Chicago Cubs' uniform. But by the time the middle innings arrived last night, the Cubs' faithful were well aware of the effect Roberts can have on a game. They would have to wait a couple of innings to learn about the Orioles' steely nerved closer. Roberts had three hits, including the 1,000th of his career, and an RBI triple, and George Sherrill got out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the ninth inning in the Orioles' 7-5 victory before an announced 41,537 in their first trip to Wrigley Field.

So maybe Jay Gibbons should give Brian Billick a call. After all, they now have something in common: Each man is going to get millions from a Baltimore team that has decided it would rather eat the rest of a contract than keep him around. Billick could advise Gibbons about what to do when you're paid a lot for doing nothing. (Take out the words "a lot" and that could describe Mr. Flip, as a matter of fact.) But here's the important thing: If Orioles fans had any doubt - even after the Miguel Tejada and Erik Bedard trades - that club president Andy MacPhail is being given the latitude to reshape the team without undue interference from ownership, releasing Gibbons should remove those thoughts.

There was a small epiphany in church last week when we sang the recessional "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded," a German chorale in which we basses must jump around more limberly than we may be used to. A tough part compared with "When the Roll Is Called up Yonder," and I stood in the rear and struggled with it, and then as the choir recessed down the main aisle and came up and stood in the side aisles, three basses wound up standing near me, like border collies...

The thought-provoking production of Doubt running at the Olney Theatre Center explores the gory, tragic, frustrating and ultimately futile ramifications of "hunting" for the truth. Sister Aloysius, the principal of a Catholic elementary school in the Bronx in 1964, treats the truth as though it were her prey. She pounces upon it like a cat stalking a mouse. She tracks the truth to its lair, sticks a shotgun in the hole and blasts away. When the answer she seeks is unearthed and laid at her feet, she finds that her own actions have mangled it beyond recognition.

THEATER DOUBT / / 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2 p.m., 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m., 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through March 9. Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney. $25-$48. 301-924-3400 or olneytheatre.org. ....................... This intriguing play, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, raises tough and fascinating questions about the dangers of moral certainty. Set at a Catholic High School in Bronx, N.Y., in 1964, Doubt concerns a dedicated nun, Sister Aloysius Beauvier, who suspects that a popular new priest may be molesting a student -- who also happens to be the only African-American pupil at the school.

Just how do we know? How do we ever know? Maybe we're hardened cynics by now. A sorry lot of seamheads turned skeptics. Maybe our doubts and distrust are wound tighter than the string in a baseball. So let me ask you this: Do you believe Brian Roberts today? Many of us will always strongly associate baseball with our youth. Forget BALCO. And forget Barry Bonds. And forget winstrol and stanozolol and whatever human growth hormone is filling syringes down at the local gym. Instinct might forever tell us to approach the game with the same childlike innocence we always have.

It seems as if the majority of doubt about Maryland's quarterback is coming from outside the Gossett Football Team building, as Ralph Friedgen once again gave Jordan Steffy his vote of confidence yesterday. "I'm not disappointed to the point where I'm thinking of changing quarterbacks, I can tell you that," Friedgen said at his news conference. Friedgen began with his breakdown of Rutgers, but eventually the questions turned to his offense, about which he said, "It's a multifaceted problem we're trying to solve."

When I was growing up in Cuba in the 1960s, I went to schools with 45 students in a classroom, where we shared textbooks and spent two months out of the year working in the countryside and attending lessons in buildings with dirt floors. The country was undergoing a social revolution, with nearly a tenth of the population leaving for political exile. Everyone was poor. The great majority of the students were of color. And yet, there was never any doubt or even thought of the possibility that we would not learn.