The Devine Sister

Sometimes, the best plays in NYC aren’t on Broadway. They’re tucked back in tiny little theaters that are “off Broadway” – which, we’ve learned, has nothing to do with the actual location of the theater but everything to do with the seating capacity. If it’s a Broadway production, it means it’s in a theater that seats at least 500 people. Off-Broadway is 99 to 500, and anything smaller than that is going to be difficult to find since it’s likely in someone’s living room.

Sometimes, productions held in these tiny venues are the most fun to go to, because you are completely involved with what’s happening on the stage – especially since this may be within “spittin’ distance” for some of the performers.

This got us to the VanDam Theater (on the street of the same name) for a 3:00 matinee Wednesday Afternoon. The play was “The Divine Sister”, and was recommended by friends who’d seen it.  That's how you usually find these productions -- word of mouth.  They have little or no advertising budget and are tucked away in venues that are obscure, to say the least.

If you’ve ever seen any of those nun movies from the 50’s or 60’s, with those great classic actresses in them – Rosalind Russell, Mary Wickes, Julie Andrews – you would recognize bits of this play as spoofs on them.

The music was lifted from several of them, although the words were redone with a big dose of cynicism added. The “Mother Superior” was also the author of the play – and he (yes HE) was great at it.

The story line was typical – sort of – The convent / school was desperately in need of money for repairs, there’s a wacky novice who’s problematic (and dressed like Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”) a frustrated Mother Superior and her sidekick who also happens to be the Coach for the girls wrestling team (and who channels Mary Wickes from “The Trouble with Angels” perfectly).

Then the stories start to get mixed up. There’s an albino monk who makes appearances and is working with a German nun sent from “the head office” (and who does a knockoff of Gilda Radner that is dead-on) but who turns out to not really be a nun and wants to take over the convent because they think the bones of Jesus’ unknown sister (Joyce) are buried under the convent.

The story line gets more and more ridiculous, but it is hysterically funny and the actors were great. If you are of an age that you watched any of these movies growing up you couldn’t help but catch the references to them and smile.

The other thing that I enjoy about works like this is their creativity. The stage would have easily have fit in our living room, and was pretty simple – backdrops that were spoofs on a church’s stained glass windows, gates (on rollers) to indicate the front of the school and a concrete fountain / bench to represent a courtyard inside the school. When you had to go to the rich Jewish widow’s house (I told you that it was a complicated story line – she was an atheist and they wanted a donation from her, but it turned out that she was Mother Superior’s mom – and the grandmother of the ditzy novice) a curtain came down to represent wallpaper and a little settee was rolled out. It was all very simple, but done so well that you knew instantly what was going on.

This isn’t a play that’s every going to make the big theaters. If it did, it would lose it’s magic. But it’s an excellent production and well worth the price of admission.

If there was any complaint at all, it was that the theater (which had visions of former opulence) was apparently the prototype for airline seating. I couldn’t sit with my back in the chair without my knees pressing against the seat in the row ahead. Fortunately, it wasn’t a sellout and we were near the back. I moved a row back to some empty seats, much to the relief of the poor teenager who was much taller than me and who was crammed in there as well.

The joy of a matinee performance is that you have the evening left to do other things after it's over.  Which is exactly what we did.