The first point to make is that this show will undoubtedly
deserve a further star rather than the three given here, once it has ‘settled
down’ in its run.
The second, that a reviewer who regards the fate of a Jewish
millenarian sect (know to us as Christianity) at the hands of Saul of Tarsus to
have been a particularly sad one, may not be the best person to review a show
with the life of the religious at its heart.
That stated, ‘Nun the Wiser’ makes
for a fine hour’s entertainment, with a few pithy and pertinent points to make
about the life of a postulant (trainee nun) along the way.
Triona Adams is an engaging performer, and once embarked on
her truth-based tale of life among the convinced and convicted, she bowls her
audience along, relating her story of a year as a postulate in a Catholic monastery
(yes, she was among nuns, but no-one apparently says ‘nunnery’).
Adams
character sketches are effective and convincing, from Mother Abbess, who sounds
as if she ought to have directed operations at Dunkirk or some other great
military disaster, to the tiny ancient with her matching size zimmer frame, the
unsound in mind or body whose world Adams once inhabited, come vividly to life.
Adams’ eye for detail extends shrewdly
to the inconsistencies of her situation and those who remain in enclosed
orders. While religious elsewhere nurse, teach and generally try to patch up
the world, enclosed orders appear doomed to diminish and disappear.
So it
ultimately was for Adams, whose one-time companions scattered at the dissolution
of her convent. Although not directly scathing of the attitudes and habits (no
pun intended) of priests, Adams’ feminism can’t help breaking
cheerfully in on their unquestioning chauvinism.
Traditional Catholics ought perhaps to remember the punch-line of a joke in which a Free Kirk minister appears at Heaven’s gate; St.
Peter's reply to his request for admission being "Weel, ye can come in, but ye’ll
mebbe no like it."
Anyone else having difficulty with Triona Adams’
fleet-footed romp through spiritual aspiration and pretension simply won’t have
seen the funny side.
Times
5-31 August (not 12th or 19th), 3.45pm-4.45pm