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Manhattan Theater Club stages comeback after series of stumbles in inaugural season
While most entertainment companies are subject to the unpredictable roller coaster of good and bad patches, this season's turnaround at Manhattan Theater Club represents a reversal of fortune that's remarkable.
After a tumultuous 2003-2004 season, the current term has been the nonprofit company's strongest since its back-to-back successes in 2000 with "Proof and "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife."
And aside from economic strength, it's got several key bragging rights. With the early closing of August Wilson's "Gem of the Ocean," there will be only two new American plays running on Broadway, "Doubt" and "Brooklyn Boy" - the MTC flag is flying over both of them.
After scrambling to find a Broadway house, MTC's Off Broadway hit "Doubt" has secured a berth at the Walter KenTheater, where it begins previews March 9 and opens March 31.
John Patrick Shanley's play, starring Cherry Jones and Brian O'Byrne, is already touted as a front-runner for Pulitzer and Tony attention.
Set in a Bronx Irish-Italian parish school in 1964, the suspenseful drama deals with a nun's witch-hunt against a priest whom she suspects of having too intense an interest in a 12-year-old altar boy. Doug Hughes' production received the most unanimously strong reviews from New York critics of any production this season.
"This is the seventh play we've done with John," offers MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow. "It's a testament to a writer who's been unrelenting in his experimentation and in the range of his plays."
The success of "Doubt" for MTC follows the company's wellreceived revival earlier this...