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Performing Arts
'Late Nite' laughs
New show pokes fun, evokes memories
Reviewed by Andrew Junker, ajunker@catholicsun.org
October 16, 2008
SCOTTSDALE — The nun — dressed in full habit with a large rosary hanging from her hip — entered the room from the back. Immediately, she spied a student chewing gum and sternly instructed her to remove it from her mouth and dispose of it.
The student should have known better. You really shouldn’t chew gum in class, especially when it’s taught by an imposing religious with a sharp tongue and even sharper eyes.
But this wasn’t an ordinary classroom, it was a theater at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. And the teacher isn’t really a nun, She’s Patti Hannon, an actress starring in the one-woman show, “Late Nite Catechism III: ‘Til Death Do Us Part.”
I could spend a few paragraphs describing how well Hannon performed throughout the two-plus hour show. She looked just like you would want a nun to look in your mind. Her Midwestern vowels and inflection fit well with her blustery, flustered speaking style.
Hannon moved about the stage — designed as an elementary school classroom — excitedly, like a teacher who’s been doing this sort of thing a long time and loves it. From the podium to her desk to the chalkboard, she mixed some jokes with improvisation and actually covered a bit of the Catechism.
But, perhaps the greatest compliment to her performance was how quickly that audience member — or “student” — sat up straight and got rid of her gum with nary a complaint or question. It was as if she were back in Sr. Mary Joseph’s fifth-grade class at St. Stanislaus Catholic School in Milwaukee — which is, after all, much of Late Nite Catechism’s charm.
Schooled in Catholicism
The Oct. 2 opening show was filled mainly with middle-aged men and women who still knew what the Baltimore Catechism was, or that the Blessing of the Sick was until the late 1960s called Extreme Unction.
Many had been to the two previous installments of Late Nite Catechism, which has been running off-and-on at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts for nearly a decade. Those audience members knew that the show included a great deal of participation mixed in with Sister’s humorous presentation of aspects of the faith.
And they were prepared to participate — for the most part.
When Hannon asked the class what a sacrament was, the woman sitting next to me briefly conferred with her friend — I barely resisted turning them in for cheating — and shot her arm up in the air.
“A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace,” she quoted word for word from the Baltimore Catechism.
Sister was impressed and gave the “student” a holy card for a reward. I immediately pegged her as a show-off. It’s amazing how quickly you revert to grade school roles when placed in an environment like Late Nite Catechism.
Solicitous audience members would whisper the answers to other, less knowledgeable attendees. There was a class clown a couple rows behind me who would shout out jokes no one could really hear or understand.
And there was the woman sitting in front of me who raised her hand after every question — every one.
And Sister called on her more often than not, and the woman didn’t even know why Galileo got in all the hot water that he did, and she didn’t pick up on the hints I was trying to feed her, and — you can see how some people get carried away when thrown into even a fictional classroom.
But Hannon weathered it all. There are many pleasures to be had when the audience is allowed to try its hand at improv with a seasoned actor. Most of those pleasures are of the cringing, look-between-your-fingers kind.
When your feet are to the fire and you’ve got a room full of strangers and Hannon herself to impress with a well-timed mot juste, an incisive, clever and just edgy enough response to one of Sister’s questions or demands, you — well, when your feet are to the fire, you tend to panic.
There was plenty of cringing on my part as audience members tried to spar with the professional Hannon, but it was all in good fun. The parts of the show when Hannon interacted with the audience were the most enjoyable of the evening.
It was strange to witness — especially since I’m young, was never instructed in the Baltimore Catechism and was never taught by a snappy, habited nun — but the audience really seemed to connect with something from their past.
It wasn’t just the light lampooning of 1950’s sentimentalism, or the gentle jokes about scrupulosity or false piety. The audience offered unbidden information to Hannon throughout the night — “I was taught by Franciscans, and my husband by Jesuits.” That wasn’t a complaint, either, but an expression of pride and happiness.
The night started with some ironic distance between the theater and the audience members’ classrooms from 40 or 50 years ago. But by the end of the evening, a lot of the irony, the winks and the nudges had disappeared.
It speaks to the strength of the show and mainly of Hannon that she was able to transform a theater full of adults into a classroom of young students eager to achieve and please their teacher in two hours.
Media critic Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Please send comments to letters@catholicsun.org.
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