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Habituated
Nunsense turns 20
BY SALLY CRAGIN

In the beginning, Dan Goggin created Nunsense, a cabaret featuring singing, dancing, punning nuns that was intended to run just four weeks. And the audiences said, "Let there be more!" And so the concept expanded into a full-length musical comedy about the well-meaning nuns of Mt. St. Helen’s Convent and their fund-raising efforts. And the audiences were well pleased.

And Nunsense begat Nunsense II, which begat Sister Amnesia’s Country Western Nunsense Jamboree, which begat Nuncrackers, which begat Meshuggah-Nuns! There was even Nunsense A-Men!, an all-male version of the show. And then, Nunsense went forth into the world and was translated into 26 languages, grossing some $300 million worldwide. And the audiences were even more well pleased. Now, a multi-city reprise of the original franchise, billed as "The Nunsense 20th-Anniversary All-Star Tour," with Kaye Ballard, Georgia Engel, Mimi Hines, Darlene Love, and Lee Meriwether, directed by Goggin and designed by the original creative team, stops at the Wilbur Theatre for a week.

Has it really been 20 years? Reached by phone in Nyack, New York (where he’s ministering to another Nunsense production — yes, this is a job), Goggin laughs, and says, "It surprises me too. I wrote it when I was 25. Well, maybe I was five." In any event, this reprise of the ur-Nunsense reminds him of the original production, even though now everyone on stage is a marquee name. "They all work very hard to do what works, and riding around with them in a car, you’d think they were unknowns, they’re so down-to-earth. At first, I’d thought, ‘Oh Lord, I hope we don’t have diva fits,’ but it’s like community theater: ‘Come on, let’s put on a show!’ "

Putting on the habit is old hat for TV/Broadway star Kaye Ballard, whom we caught up with in Washington, DC, where the show-biz nuns were cavorting. She’s the Reverend Mother, a role she played nearly 20 years ago in a Florida production. "I like that," she says in her trademark husky voice, "because I can boss everyone around." Ballard’s experience with Sisters goes way back. "The Sister Angelica I knew was exactly like the Mother Superior I’m playing. She had a great sense of humor, and one time she let me put on her outfit, just to see how I’d look. Then she said, ‘NOW TAKE IT OFF!’ "

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Darlene Love plays Sister Mary Hubert, a turn that affords her the showstopping gospel number "Holier Than Thou." She also gets to allude to her own signature ’60s hit. "There’s a place in the show," she laughs, "where I get to sing two lines — only two lines — of ‘He’s a Rebel,’ only it’s ‘She’s a rebel,’ and one time people started clapping in time, thinking I was going to sing more, and I had to stop. But when I get to the end of the show and sing this rip-roaring gospel number, people love it."

Getting into the habit has been an adjustment for Love, who was raised in the Pentecostal tradition and had had little exposure to the Sisterhood. But she’s found the costume helpful. "It does make you act like a nun because you have on this whole outfit. So you have to act with your eyes and with your mouth."

Goggin also views the past score of years through a black-and-white scrim. Having spoken to countless clergy members, he reports that "what’s interesting to me is that some of the orders that had gone to modern dress are the ones that have gone back to traditional habits. And they’re the ones getting the new recruits." In fact, a Franciscan monk once told him, "If only our nuns were like yours, vocations would rise so quickly!"

"The Nunsense 20th-Anniversary All-Star Tour" stops at the Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont Street in the Theater District, February 10 through 15. Tickets are $35 to $68; call (617/508)-931-2787.

 


Issue Date: February 6 - 12, 2004
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