Review - Nunsense: Breaking The Habit

I've yet to hear anyone complain that the trouble with musical theatre today is that too many shows are based on greeting cards, but given the success of the empire known as Nunsense, I'm surprised that more composers, lyricists and bookwriters haven't turned to the catalogues of Hallmark for inspiration.

If you hung around some of the city's hipper card shops around the time the 1980s were taking hold, you were probably amused now and then by an independent line called Nunsense, featuring actress/singer Marilyn Farina modeling as a naughtily-humored mother superior. Composer/lyricist/bookwriter/director Dan Goggin, who created the series, figured the next logical step was a cabaret show, so The Nunsense Story was booked for a four night run at The Duplex and wound up being extended for a total of thirty-eight weeks.

Revised and expanded into two acts, Nunsense made its legit debut at the Cherry Lane Theatre and, after a pit-stop at the Sheridan Square Playhouse, finished a nearly nine-year run up at Theatre Row's Douglas Fairbanks Theatre, which would also become the Off-Broadway home of Nunsense 2: The Second Coming. Ensuing sequels not performed in New York as of yet include Sister Amnesia's Country Western Nunsense Jamboree, Nuncrackers: The Nunsense Christmas Musical, Meshuggah-Nuns!, Nunsensations: The Nunsense Vegas Revue and Nunset Boulevard, not to mention the drag version, Nunsense A-Men. Meanwhile, the original Nunsense is performed around the world, having been translated into 26 languages and thus far grossing half a billion worldwide.

And that might surprise virgin viewers of the show's 25th anniversary production, once again directed by Goggin and settled snugly in the remodeled Cherry Lane. This pocket-sized musical about a song and dance fundraiser put on by The Little Sisters of Hoboken to help give a proper burial to the last of fifty-two of their own who were accidently poisoned by the tainted vichyssoise served by their cook, Sister Julia, Child of God, was an absolute laugh-riot in 1985. With a cast headed by the broad and brassy Farina as the spotlight-hungry Reverend Mother and the fascinatingly odd-ball Semina DeLaurentis as Sister Mary Amnesia, who lost her memory when a crucifix conked her on the head, Nunsense was performed with a slick, showbiz sensibility not far removed from its cabaret origins. The score, which does have its clever moments, may seem a bit innocuous on the first listen, but it's loaded up with specialty numbers like, "I Just Want To Be a Star," "Just a Coupl'a Sisters," and "(I'm) Holier Than Thou" that supply enough juice to let a showgal sparkle. Likewise, silly bits like "The Dying Nun Ballet" and the requisite Carmen Miranda impersonation score best when played with unabashed moxie and informed caricature.

This time around, though, Goggin seems to have gone the more realistic route, casting the show with a sweet, likeable assortment of actresses who you might find perfectly charming if you actually were attending a convent's charity show, but who don't display the necessary fizz to lift the material into comedic heavens. Bonnie Lee's Reverend Mother Regina has a warm, Irish disposition but lacks the vocal and comic chops for the part; an exception being a nicely played out solo moment where she inadvertently gets high over a student's discovered stash. Jeanne M. Tinker is cutely airheaded as Sister Amnesia and plays off the audience very well as she quizzes them on the history of the Little Sisters, but she doesn't deliver the soprano pipes needed to really pull off her character's lunatic showstopper, "I Could've Gone To Nashville."

Stephanie Wahl, as the ballet-dancing Sister Leo, Bambi Jones, as the wise-cracking, gospel-singing Sister Hubert and Maria Montana, as the street-wise Sister Robert Anne all have their moments, but as the evening wears on it becomes more and more difficult to accept that you're watching the New York company of the first revival of the second-longest running show in Off-Broadway history. They're not bad, but you'd probably get a better impression of how much fun Nunsense can be if you took a quick stroll from the theatre to The Duplex or to Marie's Crisis and asked one or two of the divas in residence to belt out a few numbers from the score.

Photos by Michael Feldser : Top: Stephanie Wahl, Bambi Jones, Bonnie Lee, Jeanne M. Tinker and Maria Montana; Bottom: Jeanne M. Tinker, Bambi Jones and Bonnie Lee

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