|
Four dead nuns stuffed in a freezer is an unlikely premise for a musical. But then Nunsense: the Mega-Musical has no qualms about jabbing the genre, and more especially the Catholic church, in the eye. Repeatedly. And thanks to Orpheus Musical Theatre Society's production at Centrepointe Theatre, it does so to very funny effect.
The show's plot is, so to speak, wafer thin. A meal prepared by the bumbling cook Sister Julia, Child of God (the irrepressible Réjean Dinelle-Mayer in drag) has killed off a good chunk of the Little Sisters of Hoboken. Because there's not enough money to bury them all, four wind up in a freezer while their surviving colleagues stage a talent show in a school auditorium to raise funds for the burial. This nunsensical plot is little more than a device on which to hang the show's habitually bad puns, vaudevillian musical and dance numbers, and vivacious characters. They include Mother Superior (Lesley Osborn), who used to be a tightrope walker and still hungers for the spotlight. Sister Mary Leo (Jacquelin Blakey), an aspiring "nun-ballerina," plays the Dying Nun-Swan in a parody of Swan Lake. The rafter-shaking diva role goes to Suzanne Castanza as the subversive but big-hearted Sister Mary Hubert. All perform strongly, both as actors and singers. That's true, too, of Christine Moran as the ditzy Sister Mary Amnesia and understudy Katherine Minty who, on Friday night, stepped into the role of Sister Robert Anne, whose reputation as a streetwise nun has nothing to do with a good sense of direction. De rigueur jokes about bingo, penguins and holy water (which you make by boiling "the hell out of it") dot Dan Goggin's script. So do more irreverent cracks about the Last Supper, a host of pop-culture references and enough ribald humour to remind us that beneath the wimples are real-life women. Under artistic and musical directors Debbie Miller-Smith and Gabriel Leury, the show bustles along, lagging only a couple of times in Act One and stumbling during an awkward (was it deliberately so?) turn by four "stage hands." A sextet sits off to one side of the stage, just as it would in a real-life, low-rent talent show. Wisely, the cast does not attempt New Jersey accents. Nunsense is silly and slim, but odds are even the Pope would raise a glass of wine to it. Nunsense: the Mega-Musical continues at Centrepointe Theatre until March 15. Tickets & times, 613-580-2700 or www.centrepointetheatre.com. |