I Married A Nun
nytheatre.com review by Ed Malin
February 22, 2012
D'yan Forest, ageless, reveals that she is in her 70s and has lived a life filled with love...including marrying a former nun.
Over the course of an intimate hour, D'yan's character relates 50 years of international escapades through poignant comedy and ukulele numbers.
The story begins midway. The nun in question has been re-deployed to Puerto Rico, which does more for her lust-life than for her faith. Married, divorced and back on Long Island with a 7 year-old daughter, she meets and falls in love with D'yan. They live happily in the Hamptons, interrupted only by the neighbor's rooster waking them at dawn. To hold on to D'yan, the defrocked sister shoots the coq with a beebee gun. It's love, all right.
With ukulele, D'yan riffs on Irving Berlin's "Always," proclaiming that sometimes love isn't for always. She had once been married to a man—until they went to Provincetown and decided they were both homosexual. The next stop for her is Paris in the '50s, land of all sorts of elegant sexual discoveries.
And so it's back to the love affair with the ex-nun, whose young daughter "marries" them using the liturgy of a Dr. Seuss book. They travel the world together, even sharing the experience of falling off a camel in Takla Makan region near Tibet.
But is this love "for always"? If not, what comes next? How does swinging Paris look 50 years later? What can we all do to be ready for an uncertain future?
This is a delightful show. D'yan Forest tells this story with a vulnerable mixture of remembered enjoyment and shock. This is not unlike having a cabaret evening with Betty White. Congratulations to director and co-writer Stephen Jobes for pulling this off. The musical numbers include her versions of "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "I Want Some Sugar In My Bowl."
