NUNSENSE
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Instead, we get Sister Mary Leo, who dreams of becoming a world-famous ballerina/nun, and Sister Robert Anne, who must endure the humiliation of playing second fiddle as the understudy for the convent talent show when, God knows, she has always wanted to be a star. But of course Dan Goggin didn’t write Nunsense to make a statement about Catholicism or human nature or the way we live now. He wrote it to (1) make a pile of money and (2) entertain the most people with the least possibility of offending a single touchy soul. And it shows. Nunsense makes all the previous convent-based comedies (The Trouble With Angels, The Flying Nun) look like searing critiques of the Catholic church.
Certainly Goggin is no Christopher Durang, and Nunsense is no Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You. At no point in this hopelessly silly, shallow, cloyingly entertaining pastiche of puns, nun jokes, and song parodies does Goggin dare explore any of the less attractive aspects of the Catholic church: its bureaucratic inflexibility, its unmistakable patriarchy, its insistence on living life as if the Counter-Reformation ended last year.
Furthermore, though most of Goggin’s serviceable, derivative songs are quite forgettable, a few stand out, including a red-hot jazz number (“Turn Up the Spotlight”) and a gospel tune at the end of the show (“Holier Than Thou”) that is without exaggeration the best parody of the genre I’ve ever heard: “I’m holier than thou / I’ve got the spirit now / I thank God almighty / I’m holier than thou.”
