“Incident At Our Lady of Perpetual Help” by Katie Forgette, currently playing at North Coast Repertory Theatre, is a self-described memory play. It tells a first-person narrative about a time that has passed in the character’s memory. However, the play is also rife with nostalgia bait.
The story follows the O’Shea clan, an Irish Catholic family trying to navigate the changing world of the 1970s. The narrator of this memory play is Linda O’Shea (Samantha Gorjanc), a young woman on the cusp of her freshman year at Stanford University who dreams of becoming a writer and participating in the new wave of women’s rights and freedoms. When her mother, Josephine (Erin Noel Grennan), asks Linda to give her little sister Becky (Abbi Hoffpauir) the puberty talk, things begin to unravel when word of the explicit conversation gets back to their priest. What ensues is a series of plans and hijinks to save the family’s reputation.
Regarding the actors, the highlight performances came from Erin Noel Grennan as Josephine O’Shea and Shana Wride as Aunt Terri Carmichael. Grennan gave a great performance as an overworked and exasperated mother who still has her family’s best interest at heart. Wride was the best combination of snarky and smart, giving an entertaining performance that led to the high point of the entire production.
Set designer Marty Burnett absolutely knocked it out of the park when it came to establishing the 70s. The orange and yellow floral wallpaper, wood-paneled walls and green cabinets did a perfect job of setting the decade.
The play serves as a time capsule for the 1970s. If you were not alive for this decade, you may not relate to or enjoy this production as its target audience does. Part of this is due to the dozens of references to films, music and television shows from that decade—nostalgia bait.
The problem with nostalgia bait is that it doesn’t serve much of a purpose other than to make the intended demographic point and say, “Hey! I remember that thing!” The music and movie references used are just there to establish that it’s the 70s. If you changed the music, film and political references to the 90s, the characters and plot would remain exactly the same.
The humor is also a bit of a sticking point. The script attempts to combine a farce with a family situational comedy. When you’re trying to integrate dramatic tension about sexism and teen pregnancy, the whole thing falls a little flat. However, the opening night audience absolutely howled with laughter, so what may not have worked for a select few appears to have worked for the target audience.
The show seems to have really resonated with those who lived through the 1970s, and that appears to be the play’s intention. What works for most doesn’t work for all. Perhaps, one day, someone will write a play referencing boy bands and supernatural teen romance novels of the Aughts, and Millennials will say, “I remember those things I once enjoyed.”
(Photo credit: Aaron Rumley)
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