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The Review - THEATRE by EILEEN STRONG
Published: 26 February 2009

Nuns without puns makes for a lapsed Catholic comedy

ONCE A CATHOLIC
Upstairs at the Gatehouse

A CATHOLIC guilt is all the rage at the moment.
Having recently watched Meryl Streep’s pursed performance in Doubt, I was looking forward to some lighter convent-school capers in Once a Catholic.
Unfortunately, I think I laughed more watching Doubt.
Set in 1950s London, three teenage Marys – naive, knowing and vivacious, respectively – have to contend with snide Sisters, lecherous lads and their own blossoming sexuality.
Performed as a play within a play, the use of an all-female cast generates mixed results. Amy Molloy convinces as Father Mullarkey; she booms as the dogmatic Irish priest, raising humour from his misguided sermons.
I slowly warmed to Lucinda Forth’s operatic oddball teacher, Mr Emanuelli, and Harriet Fisher’s opinionated Cuthbert has just the right balance of cockiness and Catholic pride.
However, Kimberley Morrison is miscast as swaggering lover-boy Derek.
With her full lips and quiffed blonde hair, she looks more Drag King than Teddy Boy, lending any love scenes a lesbian undercurrent – apt, perhaps, in a tale of single-sex education.
Having the squeally schoolgirls do their own scene changes to an Elvis soundtrack with typically teenage scattiness wears a little thin over three hours.
Another device which could be wiped is the blackboard, onto which the scene location is sporadically scrawled.
It’s not that there isn’t talent here – all three Marys are played with charm and youthful enthusiasm.
I just expected some more puns from my nuns.
Mary O’Malley may have won awards in 1977 for writing this play, but today it can only be described as a lapsed Catholic comedy.
Until March 7
020 8340 348

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