Nunsense A-Men!
Winter Park Playhouse
written by Dan Goggin
directed by Roy Alan
musical direction by Chris Leavy
Winter Park, FL
Orlando’s needed a big religious revival number for a while, and here it is. The original “Nunsense” took an all-female cast through the ins and outs of Catholicism, and it was such a hit the writers hammered out six, count them SIX sequels. Tonight, we get the all-male draggy version led by Mother Superior David Michael Green. Short and officious, he looks like a miniature Michael Wanzie but funnier. Very little plot gets in the way of the show; its posited as a fund raiser to help bury the last four sisters who fell prey to vichyssoise soup deaths in the first installment. Why is THAT food item funny? Back in 1971 a bunch of people really did die from contaminated soup, and when the original was penned the memory was distant enough for comedy fodder, but still in the public consciousness.
Plenty of dated references infest the script, but the cast overcomes them. Sister Robert Anne Shawn Kilgore gets laughs with “Playing Second Fiddle” while Sister Amnesia (Michael Scott Ross) gets the “awwww…” moments when he recovers his identity at the end. Sister Hubert (Victor Souffrant) teams up with Mother Superior for an excellent “Just a Couple of Sisters.” Sister Leo (Ryan Corridoni) is the utility outfielder here; he excels on “Clean Out the Freezer” and “Mock 50’s”. Back stage we find the WPPH band, some of who asked how the show looked since that are locked in a cage and can’t see it. Good thing they remembered to let them out.
While the show is a bit sacrilegious, its all in good fun, and it’s a rare comedy that can work off of a mass death successfully. Ask for “Holy Water” at the bar and insist on a twist. It’s so much better that way.
-bm
