Nun

Tom Titus Leave it to the Laguna Playhouse to come up with new and different plays that the majority of its audience is entirely unacquainted with. The current season at the playhouse is replete with unfamiliar titles, and the lone remaining slot finally has been filled with another one. It's Charles Busch's "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" ticketed for the May 28 to June 26 slot. Oh, and "Late Nite Catechism" might be around still.

Tom Titus Well, it's official. The one-nun comedy "Late Nite Catechism" is now in its second year at the Laguna Playhouse. An unprecedented ninth holdover notice was posted for the popular Monday night session, which has been holding forth since "Harvey" opened the regular season a year ago this month. The unofficial closing date now is Oct. 21. Laguna audiences clearly are getting into the habit. Repeat business can be the only way to explain this phenomenon.

Tom Titus Not that you really need a concept or a back story to put together an evening of harmonizing by a quartet with its roots deep in the 1950s, but "Forever Plaid" has one of the most interesting concepts. This musical event, which will check into the Laguna Playhouse in two weeks for a two-month engagement, showcases some of the greatest pop music hits of the pre-Elvis era. But the singers aren't old fogeys in their 60s -- they're barely old enough to vote.

All good things, they say, must come to an end, and the Laguna Playhouse has posted the closing notice for its dark night productions of "Late Nite Catechism" and its sequel, "Late Nite Catechism 2." When this one-nun exercise in improvisational comedy finally winds up Oct. 23 it will have wrapped up a three-year engagement of Sunday and Monday evenings in its various forms. "Late Nite Catechism," created in 1993 by Vicki Quade and Marypat Donovan, has "instructed" classes of playgoers all over the world.

Local theatergoers looking for something to do on a Monday night can rest easily. Catechism classes are open once more. That's "Late Nite Catechism 2," the dark-night entertainment that's been offered at the Laguna Playhouse for the past few years. The current offering is a sequel of sorts to the original "Late Nite Catechism," which opened in the fall of 2003 and has kept on going and going, somewhat like the Energizer Bunny. And, for those whose Monday nights are filled with other activities, Sister will be available for instruction on selected Sunday evenings as well.

TOM TITUS Laguna Beach's No Square Theater, having recently satirized its city in the annual "Lagunatics" romp, is reverting to traditional musical theater -- sort of. The local producing group will be holding auditions Saturday for one of the most popular staples of the genre, Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music," which the company plans to stage in its own No Square way. "We'll put the audience in...

If you've seen the first two installments of "Late Nite Catechism" at the Laguna Playhouse and think you've been exposed to interactive theater -- well, as Al Jolson used to say, you ain't seen nothing yet. "Sister's Christmas Catechism," subtitled "The Mystery of the Magi's Gold," is the latest, and by far the most entertaining, of the triumvirate written by (and often featuring) Marypat Donovan. The one-woman show conducted by a rather stern nun has been convulsing Monday night audiences in Laguna over the past three seasons.

TOM TITUS Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the classroom ... "Late Nite Catechism," a "dark night" fill-in that caught on with audiences and ran for almost two years at the Laguna Playhouse, finally will be departing with a closing performance June 20, but don't think you've completely escaped the Sister's caustic comments. There's going to be a sequel. "Sister's Christmas Catechism: The Mystery of the Magi's Gold" is ticketed for a late-year engagement from Nov. 21 through Dec. 23 at the playhouse, and it's described as "CSI Meets Bethlehem."

SHERWOOD KIRALY There's faux fright, and then there's actual fright. In 1968 I jumped in my seat along with everyone else in the movie theater when Alan Arkin leapt out at blind Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark," the first great instance of the Dead Villain Who Rises Again. By 1978 the dead villain could rise again endlessly and proved it in the original "Halloween." I thought I was too sophisticated to get rattled at a movie, but when I got home after seeing that one I looked in the closet and under the bed. Then in 1993 I got a taste of actual fright, when I stood on a hill off El Toro Road, overlooking the canyon, and saw the beginnings of the Laguna fire blow toward town.

Looking back over the past year of productions at the Laguna Playhouse, as this column is wont to do each December, the task of choosing one particular favorite among the six or seven candidates usually proves quite difficult. Not this year. The playhouse’s rendition of “Moonlight and Magnolias” clearly outshone an impressive field. Or, as this column put it, “the Laguna Playhouse is presenting an absolutely hilarious account of the rewriting period involving producer David O. Selznick, screenwriter Ben Hecht and director Victor Fleming — the latter two summoned three weeks into the original production.