FUNNY NUNS

Five nuns need to make some money to bury four of their sisters, who have been stored in a cooler ever since their tragic deaths by vichyssoise. That's the pretext for "Nunsense," an outlandishly funny really musical revue coming to Cape Girardeau tonight and Saturday night.

There is nothing cold soup about "Nunsense," which has been running off-Broadway for the past eight years. "We have to prove that nuns are fun, perhaps a bit risque," the nuns sing in the overture of their musical fund-raiser.

Fun and risque the Little Sisters of Hoboken are. The Reverend Mother (Kara Cracraft) bouncily confides her secret desires to the audience in an Irish brogue. Sister Robert Anne (Teresa Seyer) grew up streetwise in Brooklyn, and not only drives the convent car but can strip it in a wink. Sister Amnesia (Kathy Welker), well, she has a hand puppet alter ego; the novice Sister Leo (Debbie Jansen) wants to become the world's first nun-ballerina; and Sister Hubert describes the nuns' bout with botulism as "kind of like the Last Supper."

"Nunsense" is being presented in a dinner theater format at the Drury Lodge. Dinnner begins at 6:45 both nights, with the performance scheduled for 8. Reservations can be made by calling 335-3416. Tickets also are available for the revue only.

Appropriately, the revue is itself a fund-raiser that will help replace the Notre Dame High School's 45-year-old backstage curtains, the obsolete lighting board and inadequate sound equipment.

The production features four Notre Dame High School alumni. Ellen Seyer, the lone non-alumnus, is beginning her first year as the school's vocal coach.

Cynthia King, longtime director of the school's musicals, is in charge of the production. She is assisted by Judy Schott, the school's development-fund director, and choreographer Roger Seyer. Seyer is a Notre Dame alumnus who is a professional actor.

Also helping out are music director Lenny Kuper, who plays the piano; synthesizer player Paul Berens; percussionist Mary Polsgrove; and woodwind player Neal Casey.

King says "Nunsense," written by Catholic-in-good-standing Dan Goggin, is a loving, humanizing sendup of the religious life and faith itself.

"It's not meant to be offensive," she says. "Nothing in it is a real slam at Catholics."

These nuns just tap dance, sing slightly ribald songs and say things like, "If God had wanted everyone to look like people, he wouldn't have invented nuns."

It's hard to imagine such a show being produced without protest 20 years ago. Vatican II, King admits, loosened up everything.

"Things have changed," she said. "Nuns know they've changed. But they know their mission is still valuable."

At a recent rehearsal, the person most unable to contain her enjoyment was Sister Rosel, a former teacher at the school. She's been helping the actresses adjust their habits and pointing out inconsistencies "Mother Superiors don't smile like that," she says to Cracraft only half-jokingly. "They never did."

In Cracraft, Seyer, Seyer, Welker and Jansen, King has assembled a sweet-voiced, winning combination that assays these lines and songs as if they'd grown up with them.

Which they did in a way.

No, you don't have to be Catholic to laugh yourself silly at "Nunsense."