STAGE WEST: "Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help" at North Coast Repertory Theatre

Abbi Hoffpauir (left) and Samantha Gorjanc in "Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help." Photo by Aaron Rumley

            The so-called fourth wall isn’t just broken in Katie Forgette’s “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help.” It was never there to begin with.
            In this North Coast Repertory Theatre comedy that spoofs the ‘70s and punctures Catholic parish hypocrisies the protagonist, graduate school-bound Linda O’Shea, opens by introducing herself and her at-once traditional and dysfunctional Irish-American family to the audience. Linda, played with likable pluck by Samantha Gorjanc, will face the crowd and share cutting commentary throughout the two-hour play. So will Shana Wride as the feisty, sardonic and uber-clever Aunt Terri.
            It’s like Linda’s doing standup and starring in a wacky family story at the same time.
            But the character tells us at the outset that this is a memory play and that not everything in it happened exactly the way it’s portrayed. This becomes incidental once we’re caught up in the tale.
            The slower first act has to take some time fleshing out the members of the O’Shea clan. Besides Lind they area:
            Her 13-year-old sis Becky (Abbi Hoffpauir), who likes to don a trench coat and pretend she’s Bogart as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. (It seems a bit of a reach that a girl of that age would be as conversant with films from the ‘40s as she is, but whatever.) 
            The girls’ mom, Jo (Erin Noel Grennan), devoutly Catholic and a hard-working “housewife” – a contrast to the liberated Linda, herself devoted to the enlightenment of the fledgling women’s movement.
            Loud and commanding dad Mike O’Shea (Tom Dugan, in one of three roles in “Incident” – more on this), a lunch-pail guy with a lunch-pail bellow.
               And Aunt Terri (Wride), who’s living with the family in the wake of a broken marriage. In spite of her bitterness she is the smartest one in the room.
               Unseen but very much heard from upstairs in the O’Shea home is Grandma, who can out-shout Mike.
             Now you know everybody. There’s the usual extended family back and forth until the moment that Jo asks – make that tells – daughter Linda to clue in Becky on menstruation. And while she’s at, the facts of life too.
              This scene alone, the frankest, funniest truth-telling from one sister to another that you’re ever likely to hear, is playwright Forgette at her best, and at North Coast Rep Gorjanc and the stunned, wide-eyed Hoffpauir nail it.
            The play's titular “Incident” arises from this graphic tell-all: Unknown to Linda, the precocious Becky has secretly recorded their discussion (she likes to play at private eye, remember?) and the illicit recording has been heard by their parish priest Father Peter. Forgette will maneuver some laughs from that name later.
             That’s not all. The first act winds up with a reveal that literally freezes the reacting characters.
Director Jenny Sullivan has her hands full with a busy script complicated by built-in theatrical devices like the freezes and the monologues to the audience and Dugan’s shifting characterizations.      
              On top of all that “Incident” takes a more serious turn in the second act as the conflicts are addressed, highlighted by a showdown between Aunt Terri and Father Peter (also Dugan).
               Happily, everything comes together and this pointed comedy wrings laugh after laugh from its sendup of a strange decade and of Catholic church/school tropes that many theatergoers will remember all too well. “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help” is an entertaining affair that doesn’t bog down into issue commentary but relies instead on a winning cast’s fun with what could be called PG-13 sitcom comedy.
              The costumes by Elisa Benzoni are appropriately ‘70s bland but also include Becky’s Catholic school uniform of a plaid jumper and peter pan collar. Set designer Marty Burnett’s O’Shea house has that olive-green couch and splashes of orange and avocado that, again, we have the ‘70s to “thank” for.
           Seriously speaking, we should thank Tom Dugan and Shana Wride for their memorable performances in this show – Dugan does a Peter Sellers special, playing three parts including one as a woman, while Wride burnishes her rep as one of the most dependable actors in town.
             For a survivor of parochial school like myself, “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help” is a vivid reminder of what I had to survive in the first place.
             “Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help” runs through XX at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.