April 12, 2022 By Roy Harris
Hingham Civic Music Theatre is back again this month—after a two-year, Covid-spurred absence—and it’s opening with a zany stage full of “Nunsense.”
Rehearsals by its delightful, habit-wearing cast had this reviewer in stitches Monday, a sure sign of hilarity to come when the show opens on Friday and Saturday, April 22 and 23, in Hingham Civic’s traditional home: Town Hall’s Sanborn Auditorium. It will be the 73-year-old organization’s first show since it had to cancel its last production, “Guys and Dolls,” in 2020 because of the pandemic.
“Nunsense” will be presented four times in all, with its 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday shows followed the next weekend with a 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 30, performance, and a Sunday, May 1, 2 p.m. matinee.
Starring in “Nunsense,” the hit off-Broadway musical about strange events befalling the Little Sisters of Hoboken, are Rockland’s Bonnie Gardner, as the Mother Superior, along with four of her nuns: Brockton’s Hannah Ford as Sister Hubert, Pembroke’s Hannah Duquette as Sister Leo, Taunton’s Kels Ferguson as Sister Mary Amnesia, and Hanover’s Lindsay Glover as Sister Robert Anne. Ensemble members are Maggie Donius and Patty Bowes Phillips of Hingham, Deirdre Merritt of Scituate, and Connie Denesha of Middletown.
Steve Dooner, of Weymouth, is directing, with Pat Sherman as producer, and Joel Leonard and Ellen Spadorcia co-producing. Music directors are Katie and John Duff, with choreography by Diana Byrne Gossard. Nathan Fogg Desisto serves as technical director. Book, music and lyrics for “Nunsense” are all by Dan Goggin.
Dooner says he’s been impressed with the range of talents his “nuns” display, noting Ford’s “belting” in numbers that include “Just a Couple of Sisters” and “The Biggest Ain’t the Best,” along with the gospel-style “Holier Than Thou.” Kels Ferguson shows off “a stratospheric vocal range” as she performs in a variety of styles, while “Mother Superior” Gardner shows off “years of experience as a singer and actor.”
In scenes involving Sister Mary Amnesia, Ferguson delights with vocal acrobatics in “duets” with her nun-habited puppet, “Sister Mary Annette.” A particularly splashy dance number—“Tackle That Temptation with a Time-Step”—has the entire cast tapping its toes.
"The show is “a real crowd-pleaser, with songs that will have the whole audience clapping along,” says Dooner, who also is a writer and performer, and a professor at Quincy College.
Tickets are $25 each, with senior and student tickets available for $20. The website is hcmt.org, which offers a link to purchase tickets via the online Brown Paper Tickets site, https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/5379245. Sanborn Auditorium is on the second floor of the town hall, at 210 Central St