CATHOLICS IN HEAT
That’s the premise of Woods’s anticlerical spoof of family and religious values. I say spoof because satire is too strong a word; though the script addresses such hot-button issues as abortion, adultery, suicide, and loss of faith, there’s nothing here remotely resembling keen comic analysis. Farce is the wrong word, too; it suggests far more action and coherent structure than is found in Woods’s play, which is receiving its world premiere at Stage Two Theatre in downtown Waukegan.
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But Catholics in Heat falls apart in act two, when Woods begins betraying his characters and subverting his structure with easy but illogical solutions. Most fatal is his decision to have Father John cook up a scheme to promote Connie’s sort-of-immaculate conception as a fake miracle; the John we’ve come to know is a weakling but not a crook, and to turn him into one undermines the audience’s trust.
