A nonagenarian TV legend spars with a quintet of salty-tongued singing nuns in Steve Mazur’s comedic crowd-pleaser Bad Habits, a holiday hit for Santa Monica’s Ruskin Group Theatre held over to start 2020 with a bang.

The legend in question is 91-year-old Orson Bean (of Broadway and game show fame), whose Bishop Theodore is bound and determined to shut down a “dirt-poor convent running a dirt-poor school in a dirt-poor neighborhood” and erect a brand spanking new cathedral in its place.

To give the Bishop his due, the convent-saving loan the Sisters of St. Cyril’s are currently seeking would be their fourth (and most likely not their last),

Still, you can’t blame a feisty Irish Mother Superior (Alley Mills) for trying, or for holding out hope that the school’s upcoming Christmas pageant might inspire a December miracle.

Like Sister Act and the Nunsense franchise before it, Mazur’s World Premiere comedy features some of the quirkiest Women In Black ever to sing songs and crack jokes on stage: convent cynic Sister Maggie (Lee Garlington), Teutonic tornado Sister Helga (Mouchette van Helsdingen), clandestine tippler Sister Claire (Jacquelynne Fontaine), and incurably perky Sister Anthea (Jacquelin Lorraine Schofield).

And if the convent weren’t already in a state of flux, who should show up on their doorstep one frosty winter night but former pupil Maria Salazar (Kelsey Griswold) with a “vision” that just might be the miracle the St. Cyril nuns have been praying for.

Though the mystery surrounding just who or what is provoking a series of trances during which Maria reveals a knowledge of the convent and its inhabitants that a long-ago student could not possibly know leads to a somewhat anticlimactic climax, it’s the getting there that makes Bad Habits such a delight.

Playwright Mazur proves as adept at sitcom-ready one-liners (“I vas just followink orders — ze religious orders, zat is.”) as he is at peppering his script with PG-13-rated nunspeak (“That bloody Bishop won’t be bloody satisfied till he closes this bloody convent! Now, how ‘bout a bloody Bloody Mary?”), and just wait till Bishop Theodore turns stand-up comic with an assortment of jokes culled from Bean’s own redoubtable repertoire.

As for the nuns themselves, playwright Mazur and director Mike Reilly give the fivesome abundant opportunities to strut their multi-talented stuff, from Schofield’s high-note-hitting church lady riffs to Fontaine’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” as sublimely gorgeous a rendition of the holiday standard as I’ve ever heard (and the Bad Habits musical director plays a mean piano to boot).

Fourth-wall breaking lessons and Christmas pageant rehearsals add to the fun by making the audience part of the action, including a pair of unsuspecting seat-holders enlisted to play Joseph and Mary and a full-audience “Jingle Bells” sing-along, all the while allowing the cast to show off their considerable ad-lib chops.

Bean and Mills (his real-life wife and frequent stage partner) do battle with the best of them; Fontaine, Garlington, Schofield, and van Helsdingen could not make for a more irrepressibly irreverent band of nuns, and Griswold is a lovely, appropriately mysterious Maria.

Bad Habits looks terrific on Brad Bentz’s compact, meticulously appointed convent set, costume designer Michael Mullen outfits the cast in authentic Catholic clergywear and some out-of-habit sleep garb, and Edward Salas does tiptop double duty with both lighting and sound designs.

Bad Habits is produced by John Ruskin and Michael R. Myers. Nicole Millar is stage manager and Jennifer Sagiao is assistant stage manager.

Casting is by Paul Ruddy. Emily Anna Bell, Paul Denk, Julienne Green, and Sagiao (who appears briefly as the Bishop’s secretary) are understudies.

With Orson Bean still going strong at 91 and a stageful of nuns giving back as good as they get, Bad Habits hits the comedic mark with panache. Even those who’ve never ever set foot in a Catholic school classroom could do far worse than spend an afternoon or evening with the sisters of St. Cyril’s.

Ruskin Group Theatre, 3000 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica.
www.ruskingrouptheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
January 5, 2020
Photos: Ed Krieger

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Orson Bean, Ruskin Group Theatre, Steve Mazur