Theater: Avaunt, God

THE ACTOR'S NIGHTMARE AND SISTER MARY IGNATIUS EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU

by Christopher Durang

Parody is Christopher Durang's native element. He can mimic and spoof manners, trends and styles of speaking in ways that inflict the sting of truth just as surely as those of a good caricaturist. But Durang tends to end his plays unconvincingly, in a spasm of violence, as if he had been brooding on deeper things all along—like, say, man's fate. It is as if the playwright as jester suddenly dropped his mask and wished to be acknowledged as a...