Article: 9636; Posted: April 27, 2015 at 9:00 a.m.

“Meshuggah-Nuns” is back by popular demand at The Meadow Brook. The Dan Goggins musical is touted as the highest grossing show the Meadow Brook has ever put on. Lots and lots of people like Goggins’ “Nun” shows, which is why they are seat fillers wherever they are performed.

The premise of the show is that the Little Sisters of Hoboken are taking a cruise when most of the cast of “Fiddler on the Roof”–except the guy playing Tevye–gets sick. He and the nuns pitch in to give the cruisers a show of amateur theatrical sketches, magic, song, etc. The show is as thin on plot as a communion wafer. And the toughest thing about reviewing it is the difficulty in separating the cheesy comic material, which is plot-correct for a low-rent cruise, from the cast’s ability, or short-comings, toward pulling it off.

The headliners of the show are Cindy Williams (still touted for her starring role in 1970’s sit-com Laverne & Shirley) as Reverend Mother, and Eddie Mekka (Carmine Ragusa from Laverne & Shirley) as Howard Lizst, the Tevye on board. But as Williams and Mekka are a bit stiff on stage, most of the actual laughs and enjoyment is provided by supporting cast members Sister Amnesia (Jeanne Tinker) Sister Robert Anne (Margot Moreland) and Sister Hubert (Bambi Jones).

If you have found yourself on a cruise with well-intended but ultimately weak entertainment, and enjoyed it, “Meshuggah-Nuns” might just be the show for you. The nuns are sweet and certainly come off as funny to the audience. There was a lot of laughing coming from the seats, especially when the show within the show reached out to audience members for involvement. There are crowd-pleasing numbers and sight-gags, like when the nuns and Mekka do the bottle dance from “Fiddler On The Roof” with milk bottles on their heads.

I guess there is something inherently funny about the sight of nuns doing un-nunny things. This is the formula to the enormous success of Goggins’ nun series of similar shows—Nunsense, Nunsense 2, The Second Coming, Sister Amnesia’s Country Western Nunsense Jamboree, Nuncrackers, The Nunsense Christmas Musical, Nunsensations: The Nunsense Vegas Revue, and Nunset Boulevard. One can’t help but see the similarities to the Muppet series. It’s recipe theater making, but it’s a restaurant that patrons seem to like for uncomplicated comfort food–“such big portions, and hot, it must be good.” Goggins, like McDonalds, knows what he is doing to fill theaters even if the food is more like fuel than fare.

And as the show is back “by popular demand” and set a record for the theater in a previous run, reservations at “McNunald’s” should be at a premium during the run of the show.

SHOW DETAILS:
Meshuggah-Nuns
Meadow Brook Theatre
207 Wilson Hall, Oakland University in Rochester
April 27–May 17, 2015; for performance times, please check the website
Price: $26.00-$41.00
248-377-3300
www.mbtheatre.com