Review: NUNSENSE at New Theatre Restaurant

Heating up the boards at New Theatre Restaurant now through February 2, 2025 is a new production of a reliable Off-Broadway Musical Review called NUNSENSE featuring a very funny quintet of comedy Sisters from the “Little Sisters of Olathe.” (The home location of the “Sisters” may vary a bit depending on the location of the theater in which the “Sisters” are performing.)

Leading the five “Holy Sisters” is Mother Superior Mary Regina (Vicki Lewis). Supporting is Sister Robert Anne (Jenna Coker-Jones), Sister Mary Leo (Shanna Jones), Sister Mary Amnesia (Abby Rose Merrill) and Sister Mary Hubert Judy Rossignuolo-Rice).  

The premise of NUNSENSE is that the “Holy Little Sisters of Olathe” have been serving the Lord as caretakers of a lepper colony on a small, isolated island off the coast of Australia.  Unfortunately, the convent’s cook Sister Julia accidently killed off the majority of the order’s Sisters (52) by feeding them a tainted Vichyssoise soup. Survivors of Sister Julia’s cooking are faced with the expense of funerals for their poisoned Sisters. 

Anyways, Mother Superior had a vision that the Sisters should start a greeting card company which featured a series of bad NUN jokes.  The greeting card company was wildly successful at first and Sister after Sister was sent on to her heavenly reward. 

This worked great until Mother Superior got a little excited and purchased a hot tub for the convent. Unfortunately, the head Nun soon discovered that the hot tub had arrived, but she was still four NUNS short of the completed burials. The greeting card money had run out!  What to do?

The answer was to store the unburied Sisters in the kitchen walk-in freezer, put on this show, and hope the ticket receipts would allow for tributes to the final four Sisters before the health department discovered them in cold storage.

It turns out that Sister Mary Amnesia had been a country-music singer in a previous life before being hit in the noggin by a Crucifix. It also appears that she had forgotten that she was a previous winner of a sweepstakes which solveD the Sister’s money problems.

 It is clear there is and will be a bunch of NUNSENSE going on.  Please forgive, but it is difficult to resist a little additional PUNishment. 

Audiences can’t seem to get enough of a good thing.  The original Off-Broadway production of NUNSENSE ran 3672 performances and generated more than eight thousand productions around the world plus seven sequels.

This production is based on the original premise.  It is directed by New Theatre Restaurant co-owner Richard Carrothers with choreography by Jerry Jay Cranford.  The show is supposedly located on the set of a just finished production of GREASE.

NUNSENSE features an all-star cast. 

The Mother Superior character is well known television, film, voice, and stage actor Vicky Lewis. Lewis is best known to Kansas City audiences as the quirky sexy secretary Beth on the long running situation comedy NEWSRADIO.

Sister Robert Anne is Jenna Coker-Jones.  Jenna is a veteran of both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. The novice Sister Mary Leo is Shanna Jones, a long time Kansas City favorite actor.  New Theater Restaurant audiences will have seen Shanna in many productions around the area including Donna in NTR’s production of MOMMA MIA.  Sister Mary Amnesia is Abby Rose Merrill. This is her debut engagement at New Theatre.  Her resume shows a Chicago based career, college at Stanford University and she seems to share a high school with this reviewer in the Chicago suburbs. Finally we have Sister Mary Hubert better known as Judy Rossignuolo-Rice. Judy is a Chicago based actor, director, and cabaret performer with a long resume in theater and commercials.

The audience eats up playwright Dan Goggin’s original songs and music. My favorites were “Just a Couple of Sisters” by Sisters Regina and Hubert, “I Could Have Gone to Nashville,” with Sister Amnesia, and the Gospel closer “Holier Than Thou,” with Sister Mary Hubert.

As usual, an evening at New Theatre Restaurant is an event.  The show is entertaining. Dinner is excellent and the service is impeccable.  The theatre is one of a kind in its genre.

NUNSENSE continues at New Theatre Restaurant through February 2, 2025.  Tickets are available online at www.newtheatre.com or by telephone at 913-649-7469.  

Photos by Mike Savage.  

  

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