'Nunsense' is delightful nonsense

By BARBARA FREDRICKSEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 12, 2000

Nunsense, the irreverent little musical comedy about five nuns doing a talent show fund-raiser to bury four sisters poisoned by a bad batch of soup, opened off-Broadway in December 1985 and ran for 3,672 performances over the next 10 years.

Nunsense, at Show Palace Dinner Theatre, 16128 U.S. 19, Hudson, weekends today May 12 through June 25.

It spawned several sequels -- Nunsense II, the Second Coming; Nunsense Jamboree, a country music version; Nunscrackers, a Christmas show that spoofs Nutcracker; and even a version done in drag by men, Nunsense A-Men!. It has played at more than 300 theaters around the world.

Tonight, the Show Palace Dinner Theatre in Hudson opens its version of the show that started it all, the original Nunsense, for a six-weekend run through June 25.

Writer-composer-lyricist Dan Goggin, a former seminarian, has his five Little Sisters of Hoboken cracking jokes, doing corny songs and, in the most touching moments, sharing their lives with the audience. Sister Robert Anne, for example, was her tough neighborhood's toughest tomboy. Little Sister Mary Leo always wanted to be a ballerina.

Now they have become the brides of Christ and are devoting their lives to religious service. But that doesn't mean they are no longer strong individuals, and Goggin's script and songs show their most poignant and their more humorous moments. Theaters are also given leave to add local touches, just so long as they are in the spirit and done with respect for the original.

Goggin once told New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden that of all the people who see the show, the greatest fans are priests and nuns.

More than 25,000 women have played in Nunsense productions worldwide, including Edie Adams, Kaye Ballard, JoAnne Worley, Peggy Cass, Phyllis Diller and Pat Carroll.

The Show Palace's Mother Superior will be former Broadway player Dee Etta Rowe, who performed with Metropolitan Opera star Georgio Tozzi in The Most Happy Fella, created the role of Olga Von Sturm in the Tony Award-winning musical Nine and toured nationally with Angela Lansbury in Sweeney Todd.

Rowe has played leads in several other Show Palace productions, including Miss Mona in the venue's biggest hit, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Director Jimmy Ferraro rounded out his case with other theater veterans.

The gospel-singing Sister Mary Hubert will be played by Memphis native Lar-Juanette Williams, the founder of Optasia Productions in Memphis. Among other accomplishments, she wrote and directed the multicultural Christian adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, renamed Journey into Paradise.

The absent-minded Sister Amnesia will be played by Antonia Nozicka, who has done the role more than 1,000 times at various theaters, including the Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre in Fort Myers, the Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre in Lancaster, Pa., the Goldenrod Showboat near St. Louis and the Off-Broadway national tour directed by the show's creator Goggin.

Orlando actor Susan Haldeman will be the streetwise Sister Robert Anne. She's played the Narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Mrs. Prysillius in the national tour of Pippi Longstocking.

The novitiate, Sister Mary Leo, is played by Show Palace veteran Chelle' St. Pierre, most recently seen as the high-kicking Claudine in Can-Can and as Angel in Best Little Whorehouse.

Goggin was offered a king's ransom to make the musical into a movie, but he didn't like the changes the movie producers wanted to make to his script -- he thought they were too irreverent -- so he turned down the Hollywood bigwigs.

Instead, he is working on an independent film version that is faithful to his original.