The Jewish guy in the front row was laughing. But at least I felt guilty about it.
Which put me squarely in the spirit to embrace Stark Theatre's production of Christopher Durang's scabrous skewering of religious rigidity, Sister Mary Ignatiuis Explains It All for You.
Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, Sunday school, Hebrew school, walking on water, parting Red Seas—all that really separates us is our differing tastes in hats (you keep the habits, we'll stick with the yarmulkes).
Oh yeah, and that Christ thing.
Durang's 1979 one-act satire introduces one of theater's nuttiest, nunniest nuns (we're told she once denied a student was having her period, declaring it a stigmata).
Sister Mary Ignatius (Cass Robinson), her don't-screw-with-the-Gospel takes on life, afterlife and sinfulness backed by inflexible Church doctrine, cheerfully ladles out lessons in a long, laugh-strewn opening monologue. But it's interrupted by a quartet of ex-students for a bizarre reunion that starts with the staging of a strange Christmas pageant and eventually reveals how her now-grown, revenge-minded grads spectacularly rejected Sister Mary's teachings: one is gay (Michael Cassano), one is an unwed mother (Greta Jawel), another has had two abortions (Lori Kay) and the last is a depressive, alcoholic wife-abuser (Adam Allen), the latter marginally tolerable to Sister Mary because at least he was fruitful and multiplied.
Durang's screed is a black comedy indicting dogma that paints a complex world in simple colors and ill-prepares impressionable kids for life's moral grayness—and it's undeniably angry. But it's contained rage, never so wrathful that it loses control of its sharp pacing and satirical tone. And it's brave enough to forfeit laughs and delve darker as the piece downshifts from ridiculing rote Catholic tenets to their destructive real-life results, culminating in wrenching admissions and absurd bursts of violence that tie both together: They're horrifyingly funny.
Director Jim Moran sacrifices some dramatic tension by having Robinson play Sister Mary as daft and a bit disturbed from the outset, robbing the climax of the heft it would otherwise have if she'd slowly been exposed for her deranged impulses. Still, Robinson's comic aria is so galvanizing, with demonic undercurrents pushing dangerously against the surface, that it makes her a force whose reckoning we look forward to. Narratively, it's the difference between offering audiences surprise (the eventual revelation that an outwardly endearing personality is actually psychotic) and anticipation (meeting the psychotic early on and awaiting the inevitable meltdown).
Unsettlingly sweet in her habit and sneakers, and with a chirpy authority bordering on pathological, she explains the functions of heaven, purgatory and hell; outlines sins earning automatic assignment to eternal damnation (murder, sex outside marriage, hijacking planes, masturbation); corrects misconceptions ("the Immaculate Conception is not to be confused with the Virgin Birth!"); describes Jesus' excruciating suffering on the cross while munching a sugar cookie; rolls her eyes and dodges difficult questions ("Why does God allow evil in the world?"); and quizzes her 7-year-old, Stepford-like student, Thomas (Lauren Nicole Linehan), on catechism questions, rewarding him with treats like an obedient puppy.
(Giddily, she recites a list of hell-bound celebrities, among them David Bowie, Howard Stern, Paris Hilton and Penn & Teller.)
Once the students arrive, the mocking, deadpan-hilarious staging of the Christmas story is a sacrilegious howl (a baby doll, hurled out of nowhere, lands with a clank on the floor to the indifferent yawn of, "Oh look, Jesus is born," then is nailed to a mini cross).
But like a hymn's subtle chord change, the mood goes darkly comic as the foursome come clean about their lives, flinging blame at Sister Mary, while Durang's humor keeps percolating. (Sister Mary, to gay ex-student who claims he's still a practicing Catholic: "Well, you'd better practice harder!") But when another launches into bitter, heartbreaking detail (a bravura monologue by Lori Kay) about her mother's slow death, then her own rape, subsequent abortion and "seduction" by a therapist treating her for emotional trauma after the rape and first abortion—leading to a second abortion—the visit turns vengeful. It culminates in shocking acts with an insane logic that Durang seemingly suggests is the ultimate extrapolation of Catholic doctrine.
Kay, Cassano and Jawel are strong supporting players. Only Allen, something of a nonentity as the alcoholic wife-beater, detracts. And in the cramped, funky space of the Denny & Lee Magic Studio, Rebecca Lee's simple set of crisscrossing ramps and steps against a black backdrop does the job.
Now, in the interest of interfaith understanding, I eagerly await another play equally entertaining in its blasphemy—say, Rabbi Hymie Mendelbaum Kvetches About It All for You.
Same guilt, different hat.