Another Long Wharf summer season announcement—and before you sniff in disdain at the unabashed rabblepleasing commerciality of the fare, remember that the standard so far for Summer ’11 is Menopause: The Musical. We have nowhere to go but up.
Anyhow, you won’t catch me saying anything bad about the Late Nite Catechism series. Seriously, these confrontational classes with a nattering nun, if seen in the right frame of mind, can seem as subversive and unsettling as anything J.M. Synge or Alfred Jarry got pilloried for. In a way, it makes you glad to be a 21st century theatergoer. In another way, it makes easy money for Long Wharf, which can spend it on new plays. In yet another way, it could be seen as another come-on to the Italian-American community currently flocking to John Patrick Shanley’s Italian-American Reconciliation on the mainstage and to the one-night concert by Neapolitan crooner Aaron Caruso on Monday, May 16.
I remember when Gordon Edelstein took over the Long Wharf a decade ago, he told me about how he’d built up whole new audiences at the last theater he’d run, ACT (A Contemporary Theatre) in Seattle, by booking Late Nite Catechism. The run was so successful that they converted one of the administrative rooms at the theater into a small performance space and ran the nun show there for years.
It’s proven equally popular at Long Wharf. This summer is déjà vu, since Menopause on the mainstage and Catechism on Stage II was the foundation of the first Long Wharf summer season of the Edelstein era, six summers ago.
I have great memories of my first nun, Denise Fennell. She busted me for sucking on a Breathsaver, which she loudly and publicly confiscated. (My old review of that rendition can be found on the production company’s website, here.)
Late Nite Catechism came back the following summer with the nun who’s since logged the most services at Long Wharf by far, Nonie Newton-Breen. A Second City veteran, Newton-Breen not only inhabits the habit handily, her improvisational skills are heaven-sent. Newton-Breen did a couple of runs of the original and then did a winter stint in Sister’s Christmas Catechism, a bizarre sequel which screwed the verisimilitude of the original (which takes the form of an evening class whose students—i.e. the audience—are brushing up on their Catholic rites) by devolving into a maniacal audience-participation parody of CSI crime shows.
Knowing that there are plenty of Late Nite Catechism devotees in town, Long Wharf’s done some canny planning. They’re bringing back Nonie Newton-Breen, because she’s great, and they’re letting her deliver material she hasn’t done in New Haven before. Yes, Virgin Mary, between Late Nite Catechism and Sister’s Christmas Catechism there was a Late Nite Catechism 2, and while it’s been done at other theaters in the state from time to time, it’s new to Long Wharf.
Dates are July 13 through August 12, at Long Wharf Stage II. Services are Wednesday through Sundays at 8 p.m., plus 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. The Long Wharf site is here.