Oh Those Singing and Dancing Nuns

Skylight Sister Act. Photo by Mark Frohna.

The Skylight Music Theatre typically gives its energetic all, at best of times for great musical theater but sometimes, as in this season closer Sister Act, for a pastiche of some of musical theater’s biggest cliches.

Not to say the production’s energy and tech skill won’t produce a few laughs, but brace yourself for 1970s disco fever moves and extended harmonies, for constant grade school humor about nuns and malapropped prayers and for a dragged-in almost love affair to differentiate the stage version of Sister Act from the popular film it is based on.

The central plot is unchanged: a showgirl witnesses a murder by her hoodlum boy friend, hides away in full nun attire in a church convent where the nun’s choir is in need of livening up (you can guess by who) and the cop who takes her there gets to sing about “Sister” Deloris (the dragged-in almost love affair).

The good news is that the musical was commercially put together by the same hands behind many Disney musical classics, notably composer Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and his sometimes lyricist Glenn Slater, with a book that seems to have required triple stitching, given the names involved.

The professional underpinning means the music is serviceable and tells the story, though every number seems similar to a bouncy disco beat you’ve grooved on in the past or an Ava Maria-ish church melody that’s vaguely familiar.

The unlikely showstoppers are three hoodlums trying to be John Travolta disco kings in Saturday Night Fever (the number is called Lady in the Long Black Dress) and the Mother Superior (penetrating voice and sarcastic delivery from Janet Metz) proclaiming her frustration in the witty Haven’t Got a Prayer.

And you will want to remember for the record the three hoods. They are like the Three Stooges in comic heat: Rashard (Rai) Hudson, Tomás Dominguez and Miss Kyle Blair, the last already a hit this season for Skylight as Frankenstein’s monster and the Beadle in Oliver!

The bad news: there is no impressive live band of the kind the Skylight usually puts together to truly interplay with the singers. As the Skylight has infrequently done, it has bought a professional orchestral soundtrack (probably from licensing agent TMI), which the singers can bounce hard against with big mikes and big high notes. Sister Act, based on the movie’s success, put together its own score for Broadway.

Actually, the ensemble of performers is often the main pleasure, if quite predictable. Veteran Skylight director Molly Rhode and choreographer Alexis J. Roston engineer them for great ensemble effect with the coordinated arm thrusts and body twists of 1970s disco dancing. Meanwhile costume designer Bobby Sharon has gussied up the nuns with glitter and then in wimpled pajamas, whatever will get outlandish visual results.

The nuns — sometimes there are men among them (those wimples are a better disguise than winks) — are amusingly sour in their deliberate bad singing and then impressive in their good chorus numbers. But I can barely think of an old nun joke or a catty catechism mangling that this production leaves out. It also weaves disco globes and spangles into the environment.

Truth be told, all the actors are burlesquing stock types – don’t fault them, they are doing what the musical demands. They are also trying to work around the dead spots.

Shawn Holmes as the hoodlum doesn’t have as much to do as he should with his deep baritone. Here’s hoping the stereotyped acting is just for this part.

The centerpiece is Mona Swain as Deloris, the sassy showgirl who has down pat the shimmy and finger snaps of the 1970s disco queens. Well into a number called “Sister Act” (yes, just like the title), she has moments of genuine singing that reach beyond the role’s caricature.

Some audience members will have sufficient fun with well-done caricatures – they do force us to laugh. That’s known as loving musical theater so much that you’ll wait for the genuine article to arrive.

The production runs through April 27 at one of Milwaukee’s nicest theater venues, the Cabot in the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. For ticketing contact 414-291-7800 or tickets@skylightmusictheatre.org

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.