"Nunset Boulevard"

A fine story in today's Herald-Dispatch about the upcoming dinner theatre performance of Nunset Boulevard - you can read it right here:

It has been the "Morse code" for years - if a Dan Goggin comedy comes out, dinner theater veterans, Jerry and Jane Morse are on it faster than a falling crucifix on the head of sister Mary Amnesia.

The Morse's have reeled in what Goggin says is the last of his Nunsense musical comedies, Nunset Boulevard, a dinner theater set to run Friday, Feb. 11, Saturday, Feb. 12 and Monday, Feb. 14, at the First United Methodist Church, 1124 5th Ave., Huntington.

Dinner (a choice of prime rib or glazed Cornish hen and all the trimmings including dessert) is served at 6:30 p.m. with shows at 8 p.m.

Reservations must be made in advance. Tickets (dinner and show) are $22 and $8 for children under 12. Show-only tickets are $5 if space permits. There is babysitting (by request).

Jerry Morse, who is stage director, with Eddie Harbert as musical director, said they're excited to put on the Tri-State premiere Nunset Boulevard, which in title and musical stylings spoof the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Sunset Boulevard.

"We never did the first two but we did the next four that came out," he said. "After we found out about them we grabbed them as soon as they would come out and did them as dinner theater. We found out this may be the last one, so we perused the script and went for it. They've been immensely popular so this will get us going for this year."

For the past three years they went with locally-based, nationally-published playwright Jon Joy, whose Bitsy and Boots, comedy shows had become a big hit.

But when Joy took some time off with his newborn child, Morse said they began searching and Harbert alerted them to the fact Goggin's last Nunsense was coming out.

Harbert just helped put on two weekends of sold-out murder mysteries at Heritage Station and is now working on Titanic, which will be performed this spring for Fifth Avenue Theatre Company. He said this Nunsense is the most complex musically of the Nunsense musicals, which were birthed in 1985 and whose original show became the second longest running Off Broadway production in history.

"I think I have been a part of about five of the seven of them," Harbert said. "This one is a little bit harder because he tried to make it a little like the musical 'Sunset Boulevard' and trying to imitate Andrew Lloyd Webber's music is not easy. Most of the 'Nunsense' shows are pretty light musically."

What Goggins doesn't go light on is the comedy.

Once again, the usual cast of nuns such as Sister Amnesia (played by Sara Tschop), Sister Leo (Jane Modlin), Sister Hubert (Loretta Hetzer), Sister Robert Ann (Leeann Haines), Rev. Mother (Jane Morse) and Ursul Deen Snedecher (Stacy Morgan) are busy putting the fun into dysfunctional.

Brushed with a Hollywood theme, the Little Sisters of Hoboken head to Hollywood to perform in the fabled Hollywood Bowl. They'll be bowling all right but not in the famous venue they think they're playing.

Harbert, who plays Sister Mary Edward in the play, said he's been part of a couple of the productions at First United because it is for such a good cause.

"It all goes toward their missions, and it's very funny and it's also very informal," Harbert said of one of the city's longest running annual dinner theaters.

In the past 18 productions, the dinner theater, which started as a part of First Night in 1991, has raised more than $35,000 for missions that range from Ebenezer Medical Outreach to the church's mission work teams in West Virginia, Alaska and Nicaragua.

Jerry Morse said he thinks the quality of the food coupled with the quality of the performance has kept folks coming back. They estimate more than 4,000 people have seen a performance at the church.

Morse said the production could never happen without a dedicated small army of about 75 church and community volunteers.

"I think that is the thing that is most impressive when we talk about it here is the volunteers," Morse said. "You look at the amount of preparation it takes with the food and setting up tables and serving and cleaning up afterwards and we are always able to get that kind of support and pull it off. That is fabulous."