Sister Act at Flat Rock Playhouse

With Little Shop of Horrors in its final performances at Asheville Community Theatre this weekend and Sister Act in its second of four weeks at Flat Rock Playhouse, Western North Carolina theatergoers have dueling Alan Menken musicals on the boards. Horrors was Menken’s early 1980s breakthrough show, with lyricist Howard Ashman; Sister Act (on Broadway in 2011) came well into Menken’s partnership with the Walt Disney Company, best known for the animated movie musicals The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin — all of which eventually became stage musicals.

What that all means for this current production of Sister Act is that audiences can rest assured that the music in this show comes from one of the best. With lyrics by Glenn Slater (Disney’s Tangled; Broadway’s School of Rock), the tunes are catchy and clever — and, as delivered by Flat Rock’s likable cast, energetic, often hilarious, and, when appropriate, touching.

Alexis Tidwell Bailey (center) with Carli Hardon and Mischel Johnson in a scene from Sister Act at Flat Rock Playhouse.

That’s especially important, because Sister Act is a divinely ridiculous show that barely even pretends to be plausible. The premise is to match a hedonistic R&B singer, Deloris (Alexis Tidwell Bailey), with a convent choir, generating an steady flow of (never nasty) nun jokes and a lot of lively songs with vaguely religious themes and lots of double entendres, performed by snappily choreographed women in nuns’ habits. (The spirited choreography is by Maddie Franke.) The plot — Deloris is hiding out after witnessing her gangster boyfriend kill a stool pigeon — is essentially the same as Some Like It Hot, with nuns subbing in for “girl musicians" and Deloris serving as Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe, rolled into one.

Tidwell Bailey is bright and vivacious in the lead role, and while her voice may not have all the power you’d want, her delivery is unflaggingly dynamic, selling songs such as “Fabulous, Baby!” and titular “Sister Act” with an abundance of feeling. Marcy McGuigan also evokes emotional highs as the Mother Superior with songs including “Here Withiin These Walls” — and has her share of comic moments as well. The third emotive main character is the postulate Sister Mary Robert, played by Emily Grace Tucker, who starts stealing scenes early on, then belts out the confessional showstopper “The Life I Never Led.”

Paul Vonasek, Chamberlin Little, and Alex Gossard in a scene from Sister Act at Flat Rock Playhouse.

Those are fine tunes, indeed, but the numbers audience members are likely to be chattering about after the show are the comical showstoppers, particularly “Lady in the Long Black Dress,” in which three sidekicks of gangster Curtis (the appropriately gruff Phillip Brandon) imagine wooing an imaginary sexy nun. Like many of the show’s songs, this one is a pastiche of 1970s pop (the show is set in 1977–1978), in this case drawing from R&B seduction songs like “Float On” and anything by Barry White. With gradually increasing hilarity, cast members Paul Vonasek, Alex Gossard, and Chamberlin Little coo and coax with lines such as, “Hey, lady in the long black dress / Let’s give you something to confess,” finishing with a visual homage to 1970s TV I won’t spoil. It’s a show highlight. Similarly memorable is “I Could Be That Guy,” a ballad that turns into a glam R&B production, sung by police officer “Sweaty” Eddie Souther (the magnetic Kenneth Mosley), expressing his longstanding crush on Deloris.

The featured cast is rounded out by Scott Treadway, whose Monsignor O’Hara blossoms in Act 2; Jenna Leigh Miller, who’s delightful as Sister Mary Patrick, Deloris’ most eager disciple; and Madeleine Doherty, who makes the most of Sister Mary Lazarus’ curmudgeonliness (and later transformation). A talented ensemble fills out the dozens of additional roles needed to keep the show barreling along toward the fun double-fisted finale of fabulosity, “Spread the Love Around” and “Raise Your Voice,” supported throughout by musical director Ethan Andersen and his rambuctious 10-piece band. Indeed, Act 2 is a nonstop joy under the direction of Reggie Law. Law can’t do much with the clunky scenes between the songs in the first half-hour or so, but rest assured through those speed bumps that the best is yet to come.

Emily Grace Tucker (left) and Jenna Leigh Miller (right) in a scene from Sister Act at Flat Rock Playhouse.

A couple final caveats: Sister Act follows the plot of the 1992 movie that inspired it fairly closely, but its period setting gives it more of a storybook quality, which assists in selling the rather flimsy book, credited to three writers. (The program also credits the film, “written by Joseph Howard” — who does not exist. After a series of rewrites that he didn’t approve, original screenwriter Paul Rudnick insisted on the pseudonym.) Finally, the movie gimmick of adapting beloved pop songs into religious anthems is here jettisoned in favor of Menken’s and Slater’s original tunes — and it’s much more fun because of it. It’s those witty, melodic creations that take Sister Act’s audiences to heaven.

Sister Act runs through October 25 at Flat Rock Playhouse. For tickets and more information, visit flatrockplayhouse.org.

(Photos by Jeb Purcell)

Kenneth Mosley in a scene from Sister Act at Flat Rock Playhouse.