The Late Nite Catechism 2 Review

Sister Strikes Again! Late Nite Catechism 2
By Maripat Donovan. Through Aug, 21 at Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. (203) 787-4282.

Nun but the brave.

It was a slow, sultry Wednesday—a lowkey night both at theaters and churches. But at Sister Strikes Again! Late Nite Catechism 2, The Late Nite Catechism 2 Review, all Hell was close to breaking loose.

Long Wharf Stage II has already hosted the first, third and fourth installments in the now five-strong LNC series. Bringing part two to a theater that’s already witnessed the comparatively extravagant and over-the-top Christmas edition (featuring an elaborate nativity play influenced by forensic crime dramas) is instructive. Sister Strikes Back is a welcome return to the natural pace and low-tech expectations which truly distinguish the shows. It’s a Catechism class. The topic today is sin. The laughs come not from watching fellow audience members putting on silly costumes and making fun of TV shows but in watching good-natured theatergoers struggle to answer stuff they learned in school, with wry and revealing commentary from an amusingly austere nun.

If you think that sounds too tame, you weren’t there July 27. The show’s indomitable Sister (Nonie Newton Breen), wearing her traditional habit and scowl, performed her accustomed browbeating of latecomers—a standard part of all audience-interactive shows, whether it’s Sister or Dame Edna or a strip club emcee doing the scolding. And the chastened theatergoers left!, fleeing the auditorium a minute or so after the umbrage. It’s possible, as Sister conjectured onstage, that the two chastised women had simply found themselves in the wrong theater. (Menopause—The Musical is playing on the Long Wharf mainstage just a few yards away from Stage II). But without the comfort of fact-gathering and audience-appeasing, the defection could easily have cast a chill on Late Nite Catechism 2 just minutes into the performance

Others might be unsettled by such unplanned, unresolved episodes, by I was riveted. I love watching Nonie Newton Breen work. I’ve seen a host of Sisters over the years, and Breen is among the best out there. The Second City vet has quick-wit improv skills—when learning that a misbehaving woman in the crowd was named Sandy, Sister volleyed “Sandy? That’s not a Catholic name! That’s a beach name!” But she also studies and memorizes. If you do happen to have a Christian name derived from the Bible or a saint, this Sister can reference it immediately. She drops current events references that really are current. Breen keeps to the two-act structure, teaches what’s required and even shows a filmstrip (“It’s all right, boys, I’ve got it,” she says while setting up the projector). But Nonie Newton Breen is so aware and in-the-moment that she makes it impossible to tell when Late Nite Catechism 2’s scripted material (by the original Sister, Maripat Donovan, who’s now written five full-length LNC shows) ends and the improvisations begin.

Did the exodus of a couple of audience members cause Sister to hold back? No, she made the wise choice to roar ahead and even up the ante on the interactions. A regular part of the act is the shushing of spectators (as if they were students at the titular church class; the set is a present-day yet antiquated schoolroom replete with blackboards, cursive handwriting samples and pictures of both Obama and that lionized Catholic presdent JFK). On the other hand, she regularly awards students who behave, or answer questions correctly, with tchotchkes. On this night she gave away a button reading “Thou Makest Jesus Vomit.” When a woman named Barbara rustled for something in her purse one time too many, Sister took the purse away from her—and later awarded it to someone else in the audience.

I love watching Nonie Newton Breen work. I love her delivery, her attitude, her teacherly control over a crowd. I love how she brings so much of herself to Late Nite Catechism while staying completely in character. I love how she educates while she entertains, rather than vice versa. I love how you she can be openly satirical without resorting to cheap insults. For a show rooted in the centuries-old tenets of a major world religion, Late Nite Catechism is remarkably open-minded and politically correct. Breen never lets it disintegrate into dogma or nostalgia.

The theater is a temple, and Late Nite Catechism is as good a place as any to get religious instruction. It’s a comedy show, certainly, but it’s also a subversive and progressive place to debate major issues of the day. A conventional nun would not refer to Episcopalians as “Catholics with cash,” deem the phrase Christian Science is an oxymoron, or explain the evolution of Judeo-Christian faiths in terms of a movie and its TV sitcom spinoffs: “If the Jewish relgion was American Graffiti, then the Catholics would be Happy Days and all other religions are Joanie Loves Chachi.”
What real Catholic leader would publicly extol Mother Teresa as “great with the lepers, even better with the fundraising,” then note that “she looks like Joe Garagiola.” And who outside the Vatican (or George Carlin) has ever felt comfortable identifying all-new confession-worthy “Sins for the New Millennium”? Number one: “Dining at Hooter’s.” Number Ten: “Having a child with your housekeeper, then waiting ten years to tell your wife.”

An underrated genre of experimental theater with several built-in danger elements, targeting audiences of lapsed or willing-to-laugh-at-themselves Catholics, the LNC series gets specific where shows like Nunsense and Sister Act merely skim the surface. It’s a classroom, all right—not just for catechism brush-ups but for performance studies.