Catholic School Girls

Nuns: cute and cuddly brides of Christ, or mind-warping harridans screwing up generations of kids?

There may be plenty of laughs in Casey Kurtti's Catholic School Girls but there's no doubting which side of the argument it's standing on. This is quite an angry comedy charting the mental abuses of Catholic schools in the 1960s on four girls as they progress from grade one to grade eight under the watchful eyes of a gang of twisted sisters.

The four actors playing the girls take turns donning a habit and lording it over the other three, and the nuns they portray range from senile to sadistic.

The action begins in 1962 and first graders Elizabeth, Colleen, Maria Theresa and Wanda are about to navigate social as well as bodily change.

We see them lining up for their first communion, then panicking when accidentally chewing on the Eucharist. ("Jesus is dying inside me, I feel it!") Taught to abhor Jews, they're puzzled when told the King of the Jews was not himself Jewish, but a Catholic.

Emotionally manipulated, upbraided for "sins of pride", and pestered for cash donations to the church, the girls are ripe for humiliation by the time they reach puberty and are informed that their bodies are sinful.

Catholic School Girls is a 1982 American play that in the 90s was adapted to an Australian setting and toured the country. This revival is performed by seasoned professionals Helen O'Connor, Lucinda Armour, Kim Lewis and Rhonda Doyle, under the assured direction of Kingston Anderson.

The actors evoke the different stages of childhood with plenty of energy and comic deftness, and their quick-changes into imperious nuns are smooth and seamless.

Teresa Negroponte's set covers the walls in chalk writing, evoking all the drudgery and dogma that the students are subject to.

The play's main problem is that we never find out what kind of people the girls become after they escape the walls of St Brigid's School. Are they nostalgic? Bitter? Litigious, even?

All we get is an incongruous coda of the adult Elizabeth (O'Connor) remembering her schooldays and suddenly longing for God. Up to this point the play has been packed with religion, but not much spirituality. Sounds like nunsense to me. Nick Dent