If the term "interactive theatre" has you running for the hills, fear not, for the latest manifestation of the oeuvre is a decidedly nostalgic, and merry-making romp through the whys and wherefores of that curious beast: a Catholic education. Late Night Catechism, which opens at Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin on Monday, features a stern and authoritarian sister teaching an adult catechism class to a roomful of "students" (the audience). Naked fear mixes with spiritual enlightenment, as sister either admonishes you (as only Gestapo-style nuns can) for not knowing your catechism well enough, or rewarding you with glow-in-the-dark rosaries or laminated saint cards for knowing your gospels and sacraments.
The show, conceived and written by Irish-American actress Maripat Donovan, who is also its star, has now been running for six very successful years in Chicago. Such is its appeal with those who have suffered under/benefited from a Catholic education that it is now franchised out and is currently enjoying simultaneous runs in 12 different centres around the US. "It's part improv, part comedy and part religious instruction," says Donovan of her show. "The initial premise is that I play a nun giving a class in the catechism for converts to Catholicism or just regular Catholics who want to brush up on their religion. The idea is that, in my guise of a nun, I ask members of the audience questions about the Catholic faith and they in turn can ask me questions about some of the more troublesome areas of the religion. That's the basic skeletal system but what we often find is that audiences vary so much that the content of the show can develop a life of its own, depending who's in the audience and what they want to ask.
"But you don't need to be Catholic at all to enjoy the show; that would be like saying you have to be Jewish to understand Fiddler On The Roof." When the show first opened in the US, it was sub-titled Saints, Sinners and Ejaculations, which along with the "adult" in the title and the prospect of a woman in uniform disciplining you, attracted a very different sort of crowd to the one Donovan was hoping for. Once that misunderstanding was sorted out, she had to get the message across that the show wasn't attacking or in any way being irreverent towards Catholicism.
"Not at all, never," she replies, "it is supposed to be screamingly funny about the Catholic experience but it is also very respectful. For example, I put the show on in the US for a room full of 250 nuns whose average age was 68, and they absolutely loved it."
What sort of questions do you ask the audience? "We start off pretty basic, maybe with asking what the Immaculate Conception is?" That's easy-peasy: it's Mary getting pregnant without having sex. "You see, you're wrong, it isn't. It's actually about Mary being born without original sin." What else? "Well, that all depends on who is in the audience. Sometimes one question or one answer could prove so interesting that it provokes other questions on the same topic or then somebody could ask me an interesting question about the Church."
OK, why do some bishops have sons and misappropriate parish funds? "Well, these are the difficult questions. The way I choose, in my persona as a nun, to answer this type of question is to make a joke out of it and say something like `the Bishop Casey affair is just another example of girls are good and boys are bad'. What about: why does the Catholic Church discriminate against the majority of the world's population (i.e. women)?; what genius formulates their policy on birth control?; what were the links between the Church and the Nazis?; why are there so many paedophile priests?
"Yes, there are a lot of problematic areas and I wouldn't ignore any of them. To answer all the questions about the Church's role in the past, I would, in my on-stage persona, say that there are no time machines and as much as we would like to travel back into the past to change things, we can't. In relation to paedophile priests, I would say it's very wrong and I would stress how serious the situation is," she says. When talking about sex, how far can you go? "There is usually a good bit of material on birth control, but what you have to remember is that this show regularly plays in front of nuns, so it's not going to be explicit. But neither is it going to be fuddy-duddy. It is a show for adults." Emphasising that the show is above all "a comedy", Donovan says that it's best described as a crash course in the complexities of Catholicism that is open to anyone, from enthusiastic or lapsed/recovering Catholics as well as non-Catholics seeking to understand what makes a Catholic "tick".
Donovan herself had the best sort of upbringing in Chicago to stage the show: "I had 16 years of a Catholic education," she says, "first I had the Dominican nuns, then the School Sisters of Notre Dame, then I went to a Jesuit University. My home life, too, was very Catholic. We went to Mass every day, said the rosary every night and were the sort of family who would routinely talk about St Thomas Aquinas."
Still buzzing from the reception the show received when it played in London last year and looking forward to the show opening in Los Angeles later on this year, Donovan thinks that staging the show in Ireland carries more than a certain significance: "After all, this is the home of nuns, catholicism and humour."
Late Night Catechism runs at Andrews Lane Theatre for 10 weeks from Monday night