Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You & The Actor's Nightmare

One of them, a precocious little boy named Thomas, can quote the Ten Commandments on cue, and each time he does so Sister Mary rewards him with a cookie

But when several of her former students turn up the picture darkens, along with Sister Mary's indignation

One of them is the happy mother of an illegitimate child; another a contented homosexual; still another has had two abortions - the first after having been raped on the night of her mother's death; while another student, now an alcoholic, contemplates suicide

Their stories are disturbing - but also very funny - and it is quickly apparent that one thing they all have in common is their loathing for Sister Mary and the unyielding dogma which she forced on them in their formative years

In the end there is mayhem and bloodshed but, with this, the unsettling feeling that, amid the laughter, some devastating truths have been told

The Actor's Nightmare was conceived as a companion piece to Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it all for You (and providing for doubling by the same actors), this hilarious spoof details the plight of a stranger who is suddenly pushed on stage to replace an ailing actor

Having casually wandered onstage, George is informed that one of the actors, Eddie, has been in an auto accident and he must replace him immediately. Apparently no one is sure of what play is being performed but George (costumed as Hamlet) seems to find himself in the middle of a scene from Private Lives, surrounded by such luminaries as Sarah Siddons, Dame Ellen Terry and Henry Irving

As he fumbles through one missed cue after another the other actors shift to Hamlet, then a play by Samuel Beckett, and then a climactic scene from what might well be A Man for All Seasons - by which time the disconcerted George has lost all sense of contact with his fellow performers

Yet, in the closing moments of the play, he rises to the occasion and finally says the right lines, whereupon make-believe suddenly gives way to reality as the executioner's axe (meant for Sir Thomas Moore) instead sends poor George to oblivion