Drag-dressed actors shine in Barn closer 'Nunsense A-Men'

KALAMAZOO GAZETTE
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
BY ELIZABETH CLARK

AUGUSTA -- If Barn Theatre patrons could select a cast the way fantasy football leagues are chosen, the crowd's dream team would likely look a lot like the fivesome that took the stage for the season-closing run of "Nunsense A-Men" Tuesday night.

Longtime leading men Scott Burkell and Eric Parker, who've delightfully shared the Augusta summer stock theater's stage for more than a decade, helmed the cross-dressed cast of the quirky musical as the Reverend Mother, Sister Mary Regina and her right-hand, uh, woman, Sister Robert Anne. Former apprentice and first-year Equity member Trevor Southworth and two of this year's star apprentices -- Roy Brown who impressed audiences in "The Foreigner" earlier this summer and bar-show pianist Kevin Field -- rounded out the drag-dressed flock.

It's to the credit more of the five actors (plus Eric Petersen, who voiced the puppet Sister Mary Annette -- marionette, get it? -- from backstage) than to the script that the show sizzled so. Some of the songs are just so-so (although everyone in the audience probably felt the Spirit during the show-closing "Holier Than Thou"), and some of the comedy's a tad too hokey to be pulled off by any but the crispest cast.

A lot of the best bits were ad-libbed. When Brown quizzed the audience on what they'd learned from the previous song and offered presents for the correct answers, he told one woman, "You can stay seated. We're not going to do the Time Warp or anything," in reference to the Barn's numerous productions of "The Rocky Horror Show," including one presented earlier this summer. Another showgoer earned a "Jesus Love Me" hand-held fan and the advice "You can use it to shoo the bats away" as Barnie the bat made a swoop through the theater during the show. Other references sure to tickle the fancy of regular Barn Theatre-goers speckled the show.

The show is a sort of show-within-a-show deal, as with the original "Nunsense." The sisters need to raise some fast cash because Sister Julia knocked off 52 nuns with botulism from a bad batch of vichyssoise, and "It was kind of like the Last Supper." After burying the first 58, Mother Superior got a hankering for a VCR and the other four lingered in the abbey's Frigidaire until the Board of Health said to get them out of there. Good thing, too, because the Sara Lee hadn't tasted the same since. A chalkboard on the stage announced "An Evening of Entertainment to Benefit the Little Sisters of Hoboken" as the nuns entered through the house aisle and Field's exuberant Sister Mary Leo boasted to audience members, "I made that sign. I made that. You like it?"

Field, whose character, like all the others, secretly wants to be a star, was easily the show stealer as the ballerina-wannabe and youngest member of the order. His dance numbers, including "Benedicite" and "Soup's On (Dying Nun's Ballet)," were among the night's best. Southworth, who earned his Equity rank at the Barn in incredibly short order by outshining his fellow performers, may have taken upstaging all the way into the pit this time around. Although his vocal moxie easily eclipsed his stagemates, the BFA in acting he recently received at Clarion University didn't come with a minor in humility and at times he oversang his companions. Still, in the monk-like opener, "Veni Creator Spiritus," his strong singing carried the number and his "Playing Second Fiddle" was strong even if he hit a couple of wrong notes.

Brown's Sister Amnesia won't be forgotten either (hey, if they can be cheesy, so can we), nor will his hilarious lip sync as Sister Mary Annette with the backstage vocals of Eric Petersen joining him in the duet "So You Want to Be a Nun."

It takes a savvy cast to pull it off, but "Nunsense" made a sold-out audience at the Barn believers by way of a standing ovation Tuesday night.

Barn Theater season finale hilarious

THE ELKHART TRUTH
Thursday, September 11, 2003
BY MARCIA FULMER
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

AUGUSTA, Mich. -- About 20 years ago, a "little" show opened off-Broadway and became a "really big" show for author/composer Dan Goggin.

The show was/is "Nunsense," the first -- and the best -- of a number of succeeding variations on the same theme: "Nunsense II," "Nunsense Jamboree," "Nuncrackers" and, the latest, "Meshuggah-Nuns."

The original . . . well, almost . . . opened a one-week run Tuesday evening at The Barn Theatre, where its final performance Sunday will end the playhouse's 2003 season.

I say "almost" because this is, indeed, the original script and score with only one change: The Little Sisters of Hoboken are played by men.

In the hands of The Barn's five "nuns," it seems as if this is the way it should have been done all along. As pointed out early on in the riotous proceedings, in the original Elizabethan casts, all of Shakespeare's women were played by men.

The "plot" has not shifted.

Because of a fatal bouillabaisse stirred up by Sister Julia Child of God, the roster of Mount St. Helen's Convent has been seriously decimated. Those still standing (saved by a bingo game with the Maryknolls) have buried 48 of the 52 deceased nuns, but lack of funds finds the final four still in the deep freeze awaiting interment.

To accomplish this, a fund-raising variety show is being presented, with each of the sisters contributing their own particular "talents."

Led by Scott Burkell as steely-eyed Sister Mary Regina, the Irish-accented "Number One" nun, "Nunsense A-Men!" is two hours (plus intermission) of solid laughter created by Sister Mary Hubert (Eric Parker), Mistress of Novices; Sister Robert Anne (Trevor Southworth), the tough nun from Brooklyn (check the Kenarsey twang) who longs to escape the understudy role; Sister Mary Leo (Kevin Field), the novice who begins each day on her toes; and Sister Mary Amnesia (Roy Brown), robbed of memory by a head-on collision with a falling crucifix and "there" only intermittently.

In the hands of this comedically talented quintet, the jokes and situations that are funny when delivered by women become even more hilarious.

Each establishes a definite individuality and maintains it solidly throughout increasingly frantic situations. Their interplay is never overdone but lands right on the funnybone and refuses to leave.

Each "sister" has a time to shine and each makes the most of it, from Field's "Dying Nun's Ballet" to Southworth's star turn to Brown's ventriloquist bit (with Sister Mary Annette) and his beautifully blank-eyed stare to Parker's roof-raising "Holier Than Thou" and Burkell's encounter with a mood-changing inhalant.

The last rightly evokes extended howls of laughter and is the most beautifully timed comic sequence in memory.

Music director Aaron Cassette does another excellent job with his four-piece ensemble, and Dusty Reeds' set -- the school gym set up for a production of "Grease" -- supplies the perfect comic backdrop.

You definitely don't have to be Catholic to treasure this "Nunsense A-Men!"

Laughter, it seems, is non-denominational.

Contact Marcia Fulmer at mfulmer@etruth.com.

Home · Curtain/Ticket · Reviews · Photos · Michigan · Theatre