Playwright: Vicki Quade with Lisa Buscani and Elaine Carlson. At: Nuns4Fun Entertainment at
Royal George Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted. Phone: 312-988-9000; $30. Runs through: Open
You can't blame playwright and producer Vicki Quade for milking as much as she can out of the wildly successful Late Nite Catechism franchise. But the formula is starting to feel a tad stale with the latest sequel, Saints & Sinners.
Now I must admit that I haven't seen the hit 2005 sequel Put the Nuns in Charge!, which is still in repertory with Late Nite Catechism. But I did enjoy the original show ( co-authored with Marapat Donovan back in 1993 ) when I caught it purely on a lark in 2004, plus Sunday School Cinema not long after it opened in 2007.
Saints & Sinners replaces Sunday School Cinema in the Late Nite Catechism rotation, and it doesn't deviate much from the template. What you get is a stern nun expounding and heavily improvising upon the finer points of Catholicism in a Catholic school classroom setting.
But the first stumbling block with Saints & Sinners is the premise. Instead of being a class that adults have paid for, Saints & Sinners begins as a volunteer fundraising meeting for Our Lady of Good Fortune parish.
This situation immediately diminishes the authority of the Mother Superior ( alternately played by Lisa Buscani and Elaine Carlson ) . Now the audience ( always a huge part of the Late Nite Catechism experience ) realizes that they're technically participating in the roles of volunteers instead of students.
Perhaps it was the tame opening-night audience, but I didn't witness the same kind of fear-based good behavior or deliberate hellion antics that former Catholic school students often regress to when confronted with a stern teaching nun.
Some fundraising ideas are briefly touched upon ( with humorous commentary by the Mother Superior ) , but eventually the show boils down to a discussion of what famous Catholic saints and sinners should be featured in a fundraising calendar.
Unfortunately, that allows for some of the same jokes from previous Catechism shows to be recycled. The inevitable jokes about St. Joseph helping to sell real estate get unearthed again, as do after the long-standing saints who lost their official status after Vatican II.
With such a narrow focus on famed saints and sinners, the show started to feel a tad preachy and repetitious. A last-minute attempt to open things up with a general question-and-answer session comes off as being tacked on. ( Buscani's Mother Superior appeared to be disappointed when the opening night audience opted not to be too confrontational. )
Still, Saints & Sinners should appease fans of the whole Late Nite Catechism franchise. It's definitely more of the same, which can be a blessing since you go in already with a general idea of what you're going to get.