Religious leaders could learn a lot from Sister Act: A Divine Musical Comedy at the London Palladium. The last act sees a chorus of nuns dressed in robes entirely covered in silver sequins dancing around the stage Saturday Night Fever-style, before forming a chorus line (!) for some high-kicks. Spotlights drench them, a giant silver plated statue of the Virgin Mary rotates behind them and disco lights flash through the stained glass windows that line the stage. The effect is literally dazzling – Empire‘s theatregoing companion had to avert her eyes – and demonstrates one thing conclusively: if religion were actually like this, no one would miss church on Sunday*.
But how good, we hear you cry, was the musical itself? Was it as divine as advertised? Well, it’s at least saintly. The show takes its inspiration from the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg film of the same name (Goldberg is a producer of the musical) and follows a nightclub chanteuse forced to hide out from her gangster boyfriend after witnessing a murder. The police place her in the last place anyone would look, a convent, and there she butts heads with the conservative Mother Superior before learning to fit in by reformulating the nuns’ choir. It’s a film I have a guilty love of, because a) you can take the girl out of Catholic school but apparently you can’t take Catholic school out of the girl and b) the music – Motown girl group classics repurposed as hymns – is terrific.
So how does the musical compare? Well, there have been a few changes. It’s now a period piece set in 1978, with the Motown numbers (not available due to rights issues) replaced by a funky new selection by Alan “The Little Mermaid AND Little Shop of Horrors” Menken. The music, for the most part, is pretty groovy: Take Me To Heaven has a rollicking, ballsy disco thrust to it; Raise Your Voice starts slow but raises the rafters by the end, and there’s even a quick ballad in The Life I Never Led. The big final number, Sister Act, is victim to some overstretched lyrics that squish in the title of the piece, but the whole lot keeps the toes tapping, and has welcome echoes of Little Shop of Horrors and Menken’s Disney work which fans will enjoy, as well as homaging Abba, the Bee Gees and the rest.
The cast, too, are pretty great. Patina Miller as Dolores Van Cartier has a powerful set of pipes on her, and if she’s a broader and more agressive character than Goldberg’s was, well, that’s OK. Sheila Hancock is excellent as Mother Superior, sharing some vocal similarities with Maggie Smith’s original turn but also singing well when called upon to do so – and betraying some impressive comic timing with most of the show’s best lines. Julia Sutton’s Sister Mary Lazarus is also a scene-stealer, followed closely by Claire Greenway’s Sister Mary Patrick (apparently channelling Kathy Najimy) and Katie Rowley Jones’ Sister Mary Robert.
To find out more about Sister Act from the screen to the stage, please click here!
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