Review: SISTER ACT Blesses The Fulton Stage

Every movie doesn't translate into a great musical. Some - FLASHDANCE is a prime example - become musicals better neither seen nor heard. But others take well to the treatment, especially when they're about music and singing anyway. When watching Alan Menken and Glenn Slater's SISTER ACT, the question comes to mind: why wasn't a movie about a singer who hides in a convent and brings rhythm and harmony to a group of previously musically-challenged nuns done as a movie musical in the first place? SISTER ACT is the show that the film really should have been in the first place. Better yet, it's no longer in San Francisco, but set in the heavenly city of Philadelphia, allowing a scene of our phony nun breaking out of the convent for a cheesesteak (which seems perfectly normal to someone whose family is from Philly).

Opening in 2009 in the West End, and in 2011 on Broadway, in 2016 SISTER ACT is on stage at the Fulton Theatre, just down US 30 from Philadelphia and cheesesteak, and directed and choreographed by Fulton artistic director Marc Robin. Brit West, playing disco diva Deloris Van Cartier, also known while in witness protection as Sister Mary Clarence, has performed the role before, and her comfort with it is palpable - furthermore, she's got a pretty decent vocal equivalence to Donna Summer, which fits with Deloris' would-be hit turned convent Top 40 number, "Take Me to Heaven." Her nemesis, Mother Superior, is April Woodall, a veteran of that part, and both a truly fine singer in her own right and most definitely not the Mother Superior of THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
An absolute traditionalist, Mother Superior is against Deloris' improvement of the nuns' choir at Queen of Heaven even when the monsignor (Robert Vincent Smith) enjoys it and approves of it, even when attendance becomes standing room only and the collection plates overflow, and even when the Pope decides to visit Philadelphia to hear the gospel-singing, disco-dancing, sequin-habited sisters.

One might ask whether it's simply that Mother Superior can't tolerate Sister Mary Clarence, or whether she's completely musically against the golden egg that's rescuing the sisters' home from closure - but then, she hated that folk mass years ago, too.

Among the sisters, Sister Mary Robert, the probationer (Cary Michelle Miller) stands out, as does her "The Life I Never Led" in which she worries that she's never known an outside world to give up when she professes her vows. So does Sandy Rosenburg as Sister Mary Lazarus, the convent's musical director (she played Jeanette in the Fulton's THE FULL MONTY, so she's developing a stage presence as a musical director), who's delightfully dotty as she wanders between fears that Mary Clarence will steal her job and her joy that Mother Superior is getting hers for hating Mary Lazarus' decades-earlier folk mass.

The story isn't devoid of men. Jonathan Kirkland plays Deloris' murderous club-owner ex-lover, Curtis, who has a terrific Marvin Gaye vibe in "When I Find My Baby," a pseudo-love song that turns into a how-he'll-kill-Deloris litany of vengeance for her helping the police. Randy Jeter plays Officer Eddie Souther, whose "I Could Be That Guy" is a wonderful soul number. But the real highlight is the trio of Curtis' henchmen, Joey (Brian Cali), TJ (Michael Roman), and Pablo (Anthony Alfaro) in "Lady In The Long Black Dress," in which each tries to prove his skills of seduction over the other two... because they think it will help them get information out of the nuns. Nothing could be a more perfect evocation of 1970's soul, or a greater encapsulation of the joyful lunacy of the entire show.

The primary production numbers, beyond the opening of Deloris trying out her "Take Me to Heaven" at Curtis' club, are the sisters' big Sunday church extravaganzas, particularly the first one, "Sunday Morning Fever," and the numbers making up the closing Papal Mass. They're loud. They're colorful. They're DANCE FEVER (the Merv Griffin-created syndicated disco show) on steroids, with sequined habits and boogie-feverish altar boys backing up the sisters' choreography.

The costumes here are characters in themselves, and Brittany Leffler's work is prodigious not only in quality but in quantity, with both ordinary and show-time habits for an entire convent, a set of men's costumes that require a pimp-mobile to showcase them properly, and Deloris' disco diva wardrobe, a riot of purples and footgear worthy of KINKY BOOTS.

It doesn't get much louder, much more raucous, or much funnier than this. It's a musical that's really a feel-good show all the way from start to finish, and it's worth catching. At the Fulton through March 26. Visit thefulton.org for tickets and information.

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