St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 41

E5 JUN 27 1993 20 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH SUNDAY, JUNE 27. 1993 REVIEWS 'Nunsense IF Has No Higher Calling Than To Go For Sophomoric Snickers COMEDY vsri By Joe Pollack Of the Post-Dispatch Staff What do you give your Catholic friends as a gift? How about "Mr. Pope-Tato Or an autographed picture of St. Anthony? And what do you call a nun who knots her veil into a funny shape? How about "Twisted That sophomore-level humor is typical of "Nunsense II," which opened a summer-long run at the Goldenrod Dinner Theatre in St.

Charles on Friday. The talent of the five performers is generally admirable, and Dan Goggin continues the gentle pokes at Catholic education and customs he took in the first version, which opened in 1985 in New York and which seems to have found eternal life there and in several i other cities. Weak as it may be, it beats summer television re-runs. Goggin wrote book, lyrics and music, all of which are slightly above the i level of original college musicals. The book depends on a lot of one-liners, some from double-entendres, because there's no plot worth mentioning.

The lyrics are doggerel, better in the com- O'Neill is the independent one, referring to the Mother Superior as "Rev," and while she generally sings well, she had major difficulties with a second-act ballad. Brooks is a lightweight and a charmer, dancing well and leading the can-can number. Trotter is sometimes confused, as on the day she had a vision and wasn't sure if it was Catherine of Siena or Thomas Aquinas in drag. Miller, O'Neill and Holtz had the musical high spot, a song In which the nuns decry some of the behavior of priests, and Miller belts the finale strongly. I found the obligatory drinking scene to be boring, and some of the other humor falls flat, but there are laughs, or at least chuckles, to carry it along.

Brett Lassiter directed calmly and in a straightforward, simple manner, and Chris Jackson's musical direction is excellent. Adam J. Kopff adds the percussion to Jackson's piano. Barry Axtell designed the uninteresting set, and Keith Muessigmann did the basic black costumes, all comfortably habitable but certainly not imaginative. ic numbers than the ballads, and the music is simple and forgettable.

Goggin is not above cribbing here and there, including "Four Franciscans Locked in a Lavatory," a shorter, sanitized version of the bawdy English song about seven old ladies. The five nuns are Kathy Trotter as Sister Mary Regina, the Mother Superior; Tamara Miller as Sister Mary Hubert, second in command; Julie O'Neill as Sister Robert Ann, who wears red sneakers; Marian Holtz as Sister Amnesia, who has not recovered her memory from the first time around; and Christine Brooks as Sister Mary Leo, clad in pink toe All do well, each taking a turn in the spotlight, singing, or dancing, or doing a stand-up routine. Miller has the dry, ironic lines and is highly enjoyable throughout. Holtz's character becomes boring after a while, but the actress is splendid as she runs a bingo game that is delightfully rigged. She also has my favorite line, involving an egg and a traditional theater saying, but her country song falls flat V.

rV--Wlj Jerry Naunheim Jr. Post-Dispatch Mamie Miller (left) and Greg Gerhart handcuffed themselves together Saturday at the Lesbian and Gay Pridefest picnic and rally in Forest Park. Scott Dachsteiner (at center) is speaking to the crowd. All three are members of Act Up St. Louis, a group of gay activists.

1 Speakers At Lesbian And Gay Event Warn Against Amendment Coalition '70s Bad Boys Aerosmith Deliver Scorching Show ROCK MUSIC A number of recent By Michael Kuelker "Don't get deep, shut up and dance" is a representative line from Aero-smith's new album, and it pretty well typified the veteran Boston band's approach Friday night at the Riverport Amphitheatre. Heavy guitar riffing and the sheer visceral thrill of seeing lead singer Steven Tyler strut and howl are what this band is about. Tyler, 45, and guitarist Joe Perry look as if they stopped the clock: they sport the taut builds of men half their age. In fact, the whole band plays with the vigor of rockers who know they got a second chance. The band puts on a rousing show.

I last saw the band 15 years ago during its "Draw the Line" tour in the acoustically challenging Kiel Audito-, rium. Aerosmith then was at the top of the rock 'n' roll heap artd at the i bottom of the bottle. A few years and a i couple of ordinary albums later, the group splintered into solo acts and drug rehab, a casualty of its own excess. But sobriety and a renewed com-1 mitment to its own brand of bluesy rock turned the stagger into swagger write lyrics with meaning. "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" was equal parts humor and sonic thrust.

As good as the new songs are, fans of Aerosmith's first four albums didn't go home disappointed. At key points, the band let loose with "Back in the Saddle," "Last Child," "Walkin' the Dog," "Dream On" and "Toys in the Attic." Whether it was watching Tyler deliver chin-high kicks and whirl between lyrical lines or listening to Perry peel off yet another scorching lead, the show was dynamic, both musically and visually. Aerosmith has a habit of bringing on rude and outrageous supporting acts. In 1987 it was Guns N' Roses; this tour It is Jackyl, an unsubtle, highly derivative hard rock act that would go unnoticed were it not for the shock value of lead shrieker Jesse Dupree. Jackyl's songs are bump-and-grind ditties with some obscene themes and plenty of crotch grabbing; "Down on Me" and "Dirty Little Mind" were two of the more obvious, even predictable numbers.

songs mix brains with the group's brawn. in the mid-1980s, and the quintet has been building on its stunning turnaround ever since. Aerosmith has toned down its "bad boy" image somewhat remember that these guys were cast as the villains who deep-sixed the scrumptious-, ly pretty Peter Frampton in the 1978 movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." They're how content with playing to an ecstatic audience diverse in age. There's brains with the brawn, too, as evidenced in a number of Aero-smith's recent songs.

Perry and Brad Whitford lay down dense slabs of guitar throughout the show. But more thoughtful songs such as "Janie's Got a Gun," which tells of the aftermath of child abuse, show the band's ability to By Victor Volland Of the Post-Dispatch Staff The Jow-key gathering of men and women in Forest Park on Saturday had few outward signs of being the Lesbian and Gay Pridefest picnic and rally. But fiery rhetoric from the portable stage gave the event away as speaker after speaker warned against a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution to undo local civil rights laws protecting homosexuals. "This is a major threat not only to gay people but to all minorities," said Zuleyma Tang-Martinez, founder and board member. of the Privacy Rights Education Project.

Organizers said 800 people had attended the event. The Amendment Coalition, which is trying to collect the 115,000 signatures of registered voters it needs to put the amendment on the state's November 1994 ballot, is fueled by the so-called religious right, she said. "Do not be fooled when they say that lesbians and gays are an insignificant part of the population who want to impose their agenda on it," Tang-Martinez said. "If they succeed, the next group targeted could be African-Americans. And after that, the Jews, the Latinos and the Native Americans.

"This is part of a well-organized national 'holy war' against homosexuals that is bringing $2 million into Missouri to change our laws. It's a perverted sense of Christianity and it's crucial that we mobilize to stop it," she said. Said Laura Moore, a member of St, Louis ACTION, a gay-rights group, "We cannot let these people redefine who we are." Lesbian and gay people are wrongly defined by such fringe elements of drag queens and leather fetishists, Moore said. Most are ordinary citizens singles, couples, rich, poor, middle class, black, white she said. Some good news was reported by Suzanna Rose of the University of Missouri at St.

Louis, a psychologist with the St. Louis Lesbian and Gay Research Project. In a switch rpm last year, the St. Louis Police Department has assigned 54 officers to Sunday's Gay Pride Parade in the. Central West End, she said.

And, in a "historic first," all 54 underwent sensitivity training on lesbian and gay concerns in a recent all-day workshop on gay-bashing, hate crimes and other concerns. "It was a real education for most of them," Rose said. "Only five or six of them had ever had more than a 10-minute contact with a lesbian or gay person before." A number of physical attacks were made against gays after last year's Gay Pride Parade, and city police were accused of indifference. Gay leaders said, however, that Police Chief Clarence Harmon and the Police Department had "come a long way" since then. One reason, they suggested, may be the election of SL Louis' first black mayor, Freeman Bosley who promised in his campaign to march in the next Gay Pride parade.

Bosley is not scheduled to be in Sunday's parade, which begins at noon, but is to speak at the concluding festival in Forest Park at 2 p.m. lM'iH'L'I'U'HH 3 Body May Be Worker's Here Is the lineup of Sunday's TV news shows: 15,000 Gather In Berlin To Protest Bias Against Homosexuals KANSAS CITY (AP) The body of a man found late Friday in the Missouri River was believed to be that of a sewer worker swept away Wednesday when a storm sent a torrent of water through the underground system. Relatives of Wesley Gene Cambron, 33, of Lee's Summit, praised efforts of firefighters and others who sought to rescue him. BERLIN (AP) About 15,000 people protested discri-mation against homosexuals Saturday and warned that Germany's neo-Nazis posed a threat to gays and lesbians. The demonstrators came from several European coun tries and the United States, carrying hundreds of banners.

Bob Mende, a German gay rights activist, told the crowd that Germany has failed to protect Homosexuals from discrimination. This Week with David Brinkley: Rep. Lee Hamilton, chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee, former CIA Director Robert Gates and terrorism expert Neil Livingstone. 10:30 a.m., Channel 2 Face the Nation: Sen. Daniel R.

Coats, and Rep. Patricia Schroeder, and David Mixner, gay adviser to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. 1 0:30 a.m., Channel 4 Meet The Press: Leon Panetta, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-lll. 8 a.m., Channel 5 MM 'Now this is an MBA MLYTO CHICAGO, LY TO CHICAGO.

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