Review: CATHOLIC SCHOOL GIRLS at On The Verge Theatre

Casey Kurtti's CATHOLIC SCHOOL GIRLS served as the inaugural production of Theater LaB Houston way back in April of 1993. It was a huge hit at the time, often selling out its run and eventually moving to Main Street Theater for an extension. So it seems fitting that On The Verge Theatre would choose this show for their first season's final production thirty years later. The company's artistic director Ron Jones shepherded the original CATHOLIC SCHOOL GIRLS, and now Jimmy Phillips steps up to create this anniversary version. Jimmy was a major directing and acting force behind Theater LaB, and so we come full circle. This current day production is fittingly mounted inside Bering Church, tucked back in a choir practice room converted to a stage.

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The play is performed by four actresses who portray both school girls and their nun teachers over a span of seven years in the 60s at a Catholic school. It aspires to be a simultaneously funny and heartbreaking look at what it means to lose your innocence, your faith, and your youthful optimism about who you are and who God is. The girls grow and are educated under the yoke of Catholicism, and it all should resonate with those of that faith and upbringing profoundly. Yet there are universal notes about loss and that awkward phase of junior high which spans across to other audience members.

The first section of the show taking place in elementary school can sometimes come off as shrill as the girls exuberantly head into class with youthful energy. By the middle half they have mellowed somewhat, and in the last act they take on serious issues that follow coming of age. At each juncture one of the girls gets a monologue that reveals inner turmoils of growing up in this hyper-religious environment during a decade of great change. Jimmy Phillips has assembled a strong ensemble of four to take on the material, and they fearlessly dive into the mindset of Catholic girls in the 60s.

Adina Owen gets the best written parts as Coleen and Sister Mary Lucille. She has a show-stopping monologue about becoming a woman that is expertly performed. Her take on a rather cruel Irish nun is also gripping. Mackenzie Griffin contrasts girl and woman the most with her portrayal of Wanda paired up with elderly Sister Mary Agnes. She has to go from schoolgirl to kindly spinster at many turns, and she marks both with an expert physical sense. Kinley Pletzer goes for broke as Maria Theresa and Sister Mary Germaine. She is perhaps the broadest in her comedy and loudest in her volume, and she provides an energetic take on both characters. Gillian Grace is likely the most convincing as a young girl in her portrayal of Elizabeth. She gets the final moments of the night, driving home a cry out to what seems to her an unfeeling God. By comparison her philosophical Sister Thomasina is the yin to the other's yang.

CATHOLIC SCHOOL GIRLS is performed in a found space, and the tech is fine for this guerilla style setting. There are classroom artifacts like desks and an ever present portrait of John F. Kennedy (a fixture in most 60s era Catholic classrooms). Lighting is simple as are the familiar plaid uniforms for costumes. Mostly era appropriate songs are used pre-show and during scene changes for sound design. Jimmy Philips knows how to keep this material moving and keeps the focus where it should be, on the girls of the show. It's a minimal fuss production, but it's also designed to be from its inception.

The script by Casey Kurtti never plumbs the depths you might expect of Catholicism and the 60s. It tries to be both funny and serious in turns, and succeeds most when it looks inside the girls' searing questions about themselves and faith. The humor is largely focused on school-aged pranks that sometimes seem far too juvenile to an adult audience to do more than garner a smile. There is no treatise on Catholicism, but rather it offers only a nostalgic look back at what young girls were back in the day. Audiences should find it charming if not challenging, and I found myself admiring the acting more than looking for meaning in the narrative. It's a fun show, and it works fine for an evening of theater. It's well acted, well directed, and well produced. It isn't intense, but it is intensely enjoyable. That's enough of a reason to seek it out in my book, even as a lapsed Methodist.

CATHOLIC SCHOOL GIRLS runs through May 28th at Bering Memorial UCC located at 1440 Harold Street in the Montrose area. Tickets and more information can be found through the website for On The Verge Theatre which can be found at https://www.onthevergetheatre.org/ .

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