Here are a few things Sister Aloysius cannot abide: ballpoint pens, “Frosty the Snowman,” long fingernails like Father Flynn’s, Father Flynn himself. She is what you’d call a forbidding nun, a Sister of Charity without much of it. Add to Sister Aloysius’s catalog of unholy tendencies his suggestion that they occasionally take the students for ice cream. But John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt: A Parable,” first seen on Broadway in 2005, is much more than that. It is a sturdy melodrama, an infallible crowd-pleaser, a detective yarn, a character study and an inquest into the unknowable.

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Persons: Aloysius, Frosty, Flynn’s, Father Flynn, ”, Sister James, “, Aloysius’s, John Patrick Shanley’s Organizations: Vatican Council, basketball Locations: Bronx