Late Nite Catechism
By Vicki Quade and Maripat Donovan. Directed by Patrick Trettenero. Performed by Maripat Donovan. At the Shubert Theatre through January 6.

" Tony, Tony, come around. Something’s lost and can’t be found. "

Late Nite Catechism could use some help from St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. What’s missing? Not legs. Since it premiered in 1993, this one-nun show has had one hell of a run, including an ongoing Off Broadway gig, a two-year stint in Boston, and the national tour that’s brought it back to town. The source of its appeal, however, was lost on this born-and-bred Catholic. Even after asking St. Tony to intercede, I found few fresh jokes and no shape or comic edge to this show, which meanders aimlessly in its own private limbo. An amorphous mix of stand-up shtick, improv with audience participation, and oddly earnest instruction in Catholic catechism and hagiography, Late Night is an exercise in lost opportunities.

The quirks and absurdities of Catholicism have, of course, been played for laughs for ages. Christopher Durang is the master of contemporary irreverent satire, as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You attests. By contrast, Nunsense is merrily low-camp nonsense. Late Nite is different altogether — indeed, the show’s signal shortcoming is that it lacks any consistent comic sensibility whatsoever.

Consistency is, I admit, tough to maintain when the audience is part of the show, which was written by Vicki Quade and Maripat Donovan and is acted in the touring production at the Shubert by the latter. Clad in white wimple and voluminous black robes, Donovan’s " Sister " (she has no other name) dragoons the audience into the action as soon as she takes the stage, which is designed to look like a Catholic grammar-school classroom. After announcing that she’s substituting for Father Murphy, who’s off playing poker, Sister treats the playgoers who serve as students in St. Bruno’s adult catechism class as if they were kids, confiscating gum and candy, chastising those who chat to their " neighbors, " insisting that everyone stand and speak in complete sentences in response to her queries, and rewarding correct responses with such religious trinkets as glow-in-the-dark rosaries and holy cards purloined from funeral parlors. In the first act, the instruction centers on set subjects, including original sin ( " as opposed to extra-crispy " ), the difference between the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth, and the virtues and foibles of various saints who are being considered by the Vatican for decanonization.

At the performance I saw, the audience seemed amused by Sister’s authoritarianism and bossy demeanor. But in the second act, which is devoted largely to questions from the " class, " the playgoers exacted revenge, intended or not, by acting like grown-ups. The questions posed were largely serious ones about transubstantiation, the exclusion of women from the priesthood, the prohibition against birth control, and the possibility of reconciling evolution with the doctrine of divine creation. Although Donovan is a skilled improviser, she was hard-pressed to come up with amusing answers to such heady questions. More often than not she answered seriously, transforming the second half of the show into something resembling an actual catechism class.

This earnest turn got me thinking about the playwrights’ intended audience. Most non-Catholics, I’d imagine, would be bored by discussion of Catholic doctrine, whereas many Catholics, even lapsed ones, have likely been over the material before. So why would anyone sit through it, let along applaud it? As my seventh-grade teacher, Sister Patricia Anne, used to say: it’s a mystery. As for Sister’s bullying and upbraiding, my guess is that Catholics in the crowd were laughing at it largely in relief that the childhood realities it mirrors are trapped in the past forever and ever. Amen.

Issue Date: January 3-10, 2002

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