REVIEWS
Nun on the run is glorious fun
Based like most new musicals these days on a movie, Sister Act proves more enjoyable on stage than it did on film.
I caught the show of the final preview with an audience of regular punters rather than the usual first-night crowd, and the cheers and standing ovation at the end were both genuine and deserved.
The book by Cheers writers Cheri and Bill Steinkellner, is strong, funny and touching. And the disco-inspired score by Disney favourite Alan Menken with neat lyrics by Glenn Slater, is a cracker. Frankly what’s not to like, especially when you’ve got a chorus line of nuns singing their hearts out ecstatically?
The action is set in Philadelphia, where our heroine, Deloris Van Cartier, is a small-time lounge singer with big ambitions. Trouble is, she’s dating a gangster, and, when she witnesses him killing a grass, she realises that her own life could now prove nasty, brutish and short.
The police arrange sanctuary for her in a closed order of nuns, with a predictable but nevertheless highly entertaining clash between the singer, who likes a smoke and a drink, and the strict mother superior, wittily played in the movie by Maggie Smith and now by Sheila Hancock in a warmer but no less winning performance.
The shows real find, though, is Patina Miller as Deloris. She has all the comic vitality of Whoopi Goldberg in the film, but she’s sexier and sings up a storm. When she’s belting out the disco-diva anthems you might be listening to Gloria Gaynor or Chaka Khan.
She also has a funky, spunky stage presence and great comic timing. The show witnesses her licking the dire convent choir into shape until the nuns become a sensation, singing their hearts out and dancing up a storm, while reminding us that so much great American popular music has its roots in gospel.
Among the support, Katie Rowley Jones makes a sweet novice, Claire Greenaway is deliciously plump and funny as the over-enthusiastic Sister Mary Patrick, while Julia Sutton plays the oldest toughest sister more like Jimmy Cagney than a nun.
With slick and witty choreography by Anthony Van Laast and pacy direction by former Disney executive Peter Schneider, I suspect this musical comedy about a nun on the run could prove habit-forming.
Charles Spencer
