By all means, grab a cocktail before you settle in for the Avenue Theater’s “The Divine Sister,” twisted playwright and drag legend Charles Busch’s bizarre comic homage to every nun who’s ever appeared on film.
It’s funnier if you’re drunk. Seriously. They tell you that going in.
It’s also funnier if you’ve seen “The Sound of Music,” “The Song of Bernadette,” “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” “His Girl Friday,” “The Trouble With Angels,” “The Singing Nun,” “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Agnes of God” — but not essential.
It’s funny enough just watching divine Busch acolyte Christopher Whyde killing it in his latest signature role, along with proven comic actors making gleeful fools of themselves.
“The Divine Sister” tells the story of St. Veronica’s indomitable Mother Superior (Whyde), who is determined to build a new school for her Pittsburgh convent. But she’s distracted by a young postulant who has seen the face of Jesus (just don’t ask where — eww!), a lisping nun in heat, and a stoic German sporting a habit that looks like she’s carrying a winged monkey from “The Wizard of Oz” on her head. But she’s no Sally Field — more like Frau Blucher crossed with Marilyn Monroe.
Then there’s a creepy-crawler monk living under the convent, and a Hepburn-like Jewish philanthropist harboring a very Catholic secret.
It’s madcap, irreverent and borderline vulgar — in other words, vintage Busch. But I know for a fact I saw a reverend’s wife in the audience, cackling along — when she wasn’t hiding her eyes.
For those jonesing to see Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon,” “The Divine Sister” is something of an introduction — if not to the comic attitude (“Mormon” is much sweeter), but to the targets of its subversion. Like “Mormon,” this play pokes fun at religious certainty, spiritual mania and all manner of sacred cows, while also concluding that faith and doubt can coexist. It’s important to believe in miracles — even if you have to create them yourself. The world’s better for it.
To those of us who have seen one too many stagings of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer-winning “Doubt,” “The Divine Sister” is our collective comic revenge. I’ve never been a big fan of Busch’s (he spawned “Psycho Beach Party” “Die, Mommy Die,” and “Tale of the Allergist’s Wife”), and yet I laughed a lot.
Busy director Nick Sugar has many of Denver’s most respected actors letting their habits down: Rhonda Brown, Laura Jo Trexler, Josh Hartwell and Trina Magness (the hottest thing in tube socks). But nearly walking away with the whole show is McPherson Horle as a wild-eyed, lisping Long Island nun experiencing fits of sexual hysteria. She is the living comic embodiment of carnal pleasures denied.
The show, of course, belongs to the wide-eyed Whyde, so cheerful in song and voice he evokes Maria Von Trapp … on steroids. Yet she’s every bit the smiling assassin of progress from Shanley’s “Doubt”: “My dear, we are living in a time of great social change,” says Mother Superior. “We must do everything in our power to stop it.”
The story gets convoluted, and there’s a big, dumb lull courtesy of “The Da Vinci Code,” but it still makes for a quick and fun diversion for those with sensibilities that skew toward John Waters, Monty Python and NC-17 Carol Burnett.
If nothing gets your knickers in a bunch, you’ll likely like it — a bunch.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“The Divine Sister” *** (out of four stars)
The Avenue Theater, 417 E. 17th Av. Written by Charles Busch. Directed by Nick Sugar. Starring Christopher Whyde. Through July 30. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; plus 7:30 p.m. July 11 and 2 p.m. July 17 $22-$25. 303-321-5925,
