The Shannon Doyle Incident
Credits

New York Premiere
The Shannon Doyle Incident
written and directed by John Morrison

Gregory Erbach and Lynne Workinger in The Shannon Doyle Incident
Photo by Bill Kavanah

Reviews

"How was the play? Gripping. Sensitive.. It was about rape but it did not sensationalize it. Can you believe that? The acting by a cast completely unknown to me was excellent. The company is in its second year and seems to be doing everything right."

"…For drama you had to have seen "The Shannon Doyle Incident…It is as plausible as a sidewalk and inevitable as the tumbling of a row of dominoes.

In the title role, Lynne Workinger represents the human reality that Mamet caricatures. For this sad mouse of a girl, instead of turning into predator, becomes prey. First she is raped by two of the jocks at a Jesuit college (Gregory Erbach and Joe Witt, who earn a double bouquet of boos and hisses for their villainy). Then she is persuaded into making charges against her rapists by a friend and by the dean of students, only to be betrayed at last by the college president, a suavely bullying priest determined to avoid a scandal.

Morrison crafts his play in the solid, four-square style of a latter-day Ibsen, a style better suited to serous moral argument than either Mamet's stylishly gauche incoherencies or Sherman's studied flippancy. If the style is old fashioned, the topic is timeless. Date rape may be a buzzphrase of the '90s, but the reality behind the buzz is that the battle between the sexes can have its war criminals."

About The Play

Inspired by actual events, The Shannon Doyle Incident is set on a small college campus in upstate New York. Shannon Doyle, an average student from a middle class family, accuses two fellow students, popular stars of the school baseball team, of raping her at a party. The incident sets off a heated debate on the campus. Friendships are strained to the breaking point as fear causes some to ignore the situation and others to fight for the truth. Winner of the Professional Playwrights Competition, The Shannon Doyle Incident, was produced in association with The Waterfront Ensemble.

Playwright John Morrison's work has been produced in the US at Berkshire Theatre Festival, Dorset Theatre Festival, Attic Theatre (Detroit), Center Theater (Chicago) and the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, among others, and in England at Leeds Playhouse, Colchester Mercury Theatre, Orchard Theatre, Derby Playhouse, Redgrave Theatre Farnham, Worcester Swan Theatre, Watermill Theatre and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His play Divine Right was a finalist in Interplay's International Playwriting Competition.