ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 27, 1996 TAG: 9607290008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-12 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: THEATER REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
No offense intended, but nuns were never this much fun back in Catholic school.
They didn't have singing voices like these, either.
The five singing, dancing, joke-swapping sisters of "Nunsense," the new Mill Mountain Theatre musical comedy that opened Friday, won't for a second convince you that somewhere in the world, there are nuns like these. But in a couple of hours, they may remind you that God must certainly have a sense of humor.
Or we're all in a great deal of trouble.
The predicament that these Little Sisters of Hoboken find themselves in is a financial one. As the result of a cooking error by Sister Julia Child of God, the Order's resident culinary expert, some 50 nuns have gone to the Lord - their bellies full of bad vichyssoise. The Order had money enough to bury them all until Mother Superior, Sister Mary Regina (Patricia Grace Kennedy), succumbed to worldly desire and bought the convent a VCR.
So the unburied nuns are in the back of the convent freezer, and five of the surviving sisters must raise the money to bury them. Before the health department shuts them down. That's the reason for all of the singing and dancing and joke-cracking in the gymnasium of Mount St. Helen's School in Hoboken.
Fortunately, these are five, very talented nuns.
Sister Mary Leo (Bethel Caram), an initiate, has dedicated her life to God through dance. En pointe. Her rendition of "The Dying Nun" (a la ``Swan Lake'') is truly an inspiration. Sister Mary Hubert (Nicole Hill) sings some pretty mean gospel. Sister Mary Robert Anne (Barbara Neal), who gets her big break when Sister Julia Child of God gets sick on her own cooking, has a voice like Ethel Merman's. And quite a repertoire of "habit jokes."
Finally, there is Sister Mary Amnesia (Stephanie Klatsky; Beauty in MMT's ``Beauty and the Beast''), whose dizzy banter is topped only by her remarkable, operatic voice. Klatsky has most of the best lines in this play, by Dan Goggin, and makes the most of them.
It seems only fair to mention that some of the jokes in this play may strike a very few as in poor taste - that is, if you take your religion completely seriously.
But the audience at Wednesday's preview - made up almost entirely of people from Roanoke Catholic School - seemed very much in the spirit of the thing. And it is, of course, all in good fun.
The play's only weakness, in fact, is that sometimes it gets serious. We're not talking "Climb Every Mountain" serious, but with all the slapstick, off-color comedy going on, the straight-faced numbers fall a little flat.
They're small penance to pay, however, for the rest of the play's comic indulgences. Director Drew Geraci has obviously learned a lot from his own ensemble experiences - as in "Forever Plaid" - and gets five wonderful performances from five, very talented women.
Praise be.
* `Nunsense' continues through Aug. 18 on Mill Mountain Theatre's main stage. 342-5740.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 linesby CNB