When we were discussing show assignments a couple of weeks ago, it became known that both my colleague, Omar Willey, and I would be going to see Scot Augustson's Penguins 4: Suffer The Children at Annex Theater. With this in mind, I proposed that we crib a page from The Stranger, back when they had space for a full theater section, and have the two of us review the show.

What better way to illustrate just how subjective this activity is than by having two reviewers critique the same work? What better show to do that with than the latest chapter of the Penguins series, which I once described in these pages as "a quivering pile of sacrilegious blasphemy?"

It wasn't an ideal situation for the experiment; Omar and I saw two separate performances, but only a night apart in order to mitigate some of the discrepancies. Omar saw it with a full house, I did not. I hope the results are as interesting to you as it was for me.

Here's what Omar had to say about Penguins 4:

That Doubt: A Parable is what American theater thinks of as "serious religious drama" is simply an indication of America's inability to be serious about either religion or drama. Since there is no possibility of being dramatically serious, the only other option is not to be. Comedy is often the best way to be serious and to use the scalpel to flay human folly alive.

But Penguins isn't serious, no more than an episode of American Gladiators. Both exist simply as pretext for people to show off. This is undoubtedly the key to its success. Audiences love glib, semi-ironic, scatological priests, foul-mouthed nuns who feed marshmallows to Mormons and of course dirty old women who are impregnated by adolescents. Saying "penis" between scene changes always works, too. Any of these, much less all of these, gives actors and playwrights carte blanche to indulge in ham and scene-chewing. And who can better ham it up than Lisa Viertel and Jenny Schmidt? Who better to indulge in every phallic playwrighting gag than Scot Augustson?

The cast is nearly faultless. Bret Fetzer's direction is excellent. I have no doubt most people will enjoy the crudity and sophomorism of the script. Some will probably call it outrageous in the best possible sense.

I am not one of those people.

The script is very much like something teenagers make up at that point in life when they are trying to offend their authority figures in life to test their boundaries. As I am no longer a teenager and do not think like one, much of the script is trite. Without being Kreskin, I could easily tell everything that was going to happen. The script is also episodic in the extreme. Each scene made me wonder to myself: What's the point? Is the playwright just trying to offend me? I never answered those questions with satisfaction. I am not easily shocked. Jokes that might have shock value for a lapsed Catholic who needs an excuse to laugh at his religion have zero effect on me. Begotten and Dark Habits contain more shocking ideas in ten minutes than Penguins in an evening or three. The only way a play as puerile as Penguins could shock me would be if the producers drew on the spirit of William Castle and inserted a buzzer into my seat.

I highly doubt Americans will ever get serious about religion on stage, either dramatically or comically. Meanwhile, there will be plenty of burlesque shows in religious clothing. People who find Penguins offensive, depraved and shocking will probably enjoy it as such. But the bar should be higher.

Do I agree? Sort of.

Honestly, my reaction is a bit complex. At the time I found myself thinking about the nature of serialized theater, particularly serialized comedy in theater, and how it seems to suffer from Hollywood Sequel-itis. Everything becomes bigger and bigger, certain characters are brought back to try to recapture lightning in a bottle by going through the same character beats again and again; until the characters are lost in a mish mash of exaggerated repetitive story beats. It's a common problem, and it seems that it's been only recently that writers have remembered that it helps to have a fixed end-point for their characters.

This line of thought was taking place in the background; in the foreground I was watching Sister Jenny Memphis (Sophie Lowenstein) visiting her fellow henchnun, Sister Mimi Coco (Jenny Schmidt), whom Sister Memphis believes is in a full body cast when she takes the opportunity to confess her lesbian lust for Sister Coco. Sister Murphy then acts on that lust by satisfying herself atop the patient in the cast. I had seen two of the prior installments in the series, so it wasn't a shock to see a nun acting sinfully, but I still laughed and I wasn't alone. Nor did my thoughts keep me from smiling as I watched the comely Sister Candy (Jillian Vashro) share a dream ballet with Father Luke (Daniel Christensen) or from enjoying the discomfort Father Jones (Chris Dietz) expresses during a phone call with the Pope.

I agree with the majority of what my esteemed colleague said above, certainly the novelty behind the concept ("The Catholic Church meets The Sopranos") has worn off for me and the surface momentum of the various plotlines doesn't help matters. But maybe the scatological murderous priests, the foul-mouthed murderous nuns, the kooky heavily accented monk spewing malapropisms and the nun who reveals her butt while wearing a hospital gown is what Penguins is about. Maybe shock or outrage or even coherent storytelling isn't the goal, maybe it's about having naughty fun while knocking Organized Religion and its piety down a peg or two...Maybe all Augustson and Fetzer want us to do is to stop thinking so much and just watch the pretty people do and say preposterous things.

Penguins 4, it's questionable theater but it's also a very silly dirty romp.

Fridays and Saturdays at 11:00p.m. through February 18 (No show on Friday February 4, due to Spin The Bottle ) // Annex Theater 1100 East Pike Street // $10/general, $5/TPS/military/seniors/students. Tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets

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