Good and Filthy

Mocking the Catholic Church has been a popular theatrical practice
for eons, with results ranging from biting satires (Christopher
Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You) to
warm-and-fuzzy spoofs (Nunsense, Late Nite Catechism).
Scot Augustson’s Penguins—the late-night series whose
first installment opened this past weekend at Annex Theatre—is
something new in the world of Catholic mockery. Set in a cartoonish
diocese where the nuns and priests engage in a constant war for power,
Penguins rejects both pointed Catholic satire and any and all
warmth-and-fuzziness by coming on like a hard-boiled crime thriller,
with gangster priests, gun-toting nuns, and a bottomless well of
depravity.

Of course, in certain hands, gangster priests and gun-toting nuns
could be fodder for Nunsense-level cutesiness, but I wasn’t
kidding about that bottomless well of depravity. Time and again,
Penguins shocked its opening-night audience—a late-night
Capitol Hill crowd, no less—into hysterics. Playwright Augustson
has made a name for himself by creating goofy comedy with a pitch-black
heart—the belovedly filthy shadow-puppet troupe Sgt. Rigsby &
His Amazing Silhouettes is his doing—but Penguins might be
the best forum yet for his talents. As I mentioned, Penguins will be an ongoing series, and the premiere episode shows Augustson’s
fine understanding of the form, introducing a half-dozen or so
stock-ish characters and roping each into a properly melodramatic
cliff-hanger in one hour flat.

Helping things immensely is the cast, a uniformly excellent crew
directed by Bret Fetzer, who keeps things fast, sharp, and funny. (Let
the record show that Fetzer and Augustson were Stranger theater
editors in the 1990s.) Also earning individual props: actor Chris
Dietz, who cements the show’s comic tone with his masterful performance
as Father Jones. Speaking to parishioners in a sunny Irish brogue
before turning on rivals with a cuss-laden Jersey growl, Dietz’s Father
Jones is a dark comic marvel. Penguins: Episode One continues
through the end of the month; I can’t wait to see this winter’s episode
two.