Once A Catholic
              (Celtic Arts Center; 70 seats; $10 top)

Mary O’Malley’s offbeat comedy “Once A Catholic” is a mischievously clever treatment on the long arm of the Catholic Church that, while tending to be a little long on the “Hail Marys,” gets a good outing here.

This production is most notable because of its well-rounded cast portraying a group of teenage girls, nuns, priests and assorted boyfriends. On the whole, the group handles the gentle humor quite well and even  go so far, under Joe Praml’s apt direction, to pull at the seams of their characters and take the comedy a step farther.

Morgan Walsh’s red hair and innocent demeanor play quite well as the ever-pure teen, Mary Mooney, while Elizabeth Jackson is appropriately feisty and brash as her schoolmate.

Tim Brown does a fine job as the righteous Father Mullarkey as does China Cassie O’Kelly as the Gestapo nun, Mother Basil. Both Bob Foster and Tim Hannon are notable as boyfriends of two of the girls.

Adel Mazen’s set design is a little too sparse, but J. Paris Thomas’ costumes hit the mark.

Last Sunday’s show unfortunately was interrupted by pounding noises upstairs from the theater, but the cast managed to bring the piece together despite the drawback.

Show will most likely be a draw to people who can relate to the infallible umbrella of the Catholic Church and all that it implies.
                                                                                      Teen.
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ONCE A CATHOLIC, Mary O’Malley’s 1977 play about life at an Irish-Catholic girl’s school in 1957 London is a delightfully comic stew that, but for the lack of a few key ingredients, could be a far-heartier dish than what is served here. At their least ambitious, plays that deal in the inherent absurdities of pre-Vatican-II-reform Catholic lore can be either sure-fire camp (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You) or, in more skillful hands, a tidy microcosm of bourgeois moral hypocrisy (Joe Orton’s Loot). Unfortunately, O’Malley’s ironic juxtapositions (nicely handled by director Joe Praml) too often exploit the former rather than the latter. Scenes of nuns engaging in hyper-repressive tirades against sins of the flesh and of Godless communism go for the easy laughs at the expense of neglecting the play’s enormous potential - that being the ironic persecution of a hopelessly naive and saintly Mary Mooney (Morgan Walsh). Walsh’s excellent performance is blunted by both O’Malley’s and Praml’s failure to either offset some of the character’s sometimes painfully untempered innocence, or to weave the play’s episodic structure into something that perhaps more starkly illustrates that which is only hinted: the Catholic school’s time-honored tendency to transform saintliness into worldliness.
Overall, however, the efforts of a spot-on cast and an astute director make sitting through the flaws well worth the effort. Celtic Arts Center, 5651 Hollywood Blvd.; Fri-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m.;  thru Sept. 6 (213) 462-6844.          (Bill Raden).
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By ROBERT KOEHLER
‘ONCE A CATHOLIC’

Is another comedy about the comic misadventures of young Catholic girls really necessary? Mary O’Malley’s 1977 play “Once a Catholic” comes to Los Angeles (at the Celtic Arts Center) after “Catholic School Girls” and a general feeling that the genre has been exhausted. The Center’s rather clammy atmosphere and Adel Mazen’s set of plain scenic paintings and pull-out canvas backdrops don’t help.
    Two elements, though, keep “Once a Catholic” from fading before our eyes. The first is O’Malley’s ability to write strong, revealing scenes deeply based in character motivation. Some of them—like Mary Mooney’s innocent but scandalous classroom inquiries into sexual biology (Morgan Walsh) or Mary McGinty’s showdown with her unfaithful heartthrob (Elizabeth Jackson and Bob Foster)—are self-contained dramas. They’re better than the overall play which is burdened with so many scenes, blackouts, shifts in setting, that the effect is of a screenplay on stage.
    The second element is director Joe Praml’s casting: The schoolgirls (especially Walsh, Jackson and Kerrie Kilpatrick’s scheming Mary Gallagher) and the boyfriends (Foster, and Tim Hannon’s intriguing take on a free-thinking student of the cloth) are absolutely in place. The elders are in and out: Barbara Mealy’s Mother Peter isn’t the nun of your nightmares; Tim Brown’s Father Mullarkey is an Irish impersonation and David Farjeon’s music teacher seems to be in a sleepwalk, while China Cassie O’Kelly and Rose Malek-Yonan (replacing Jacintha Friel) could be worthy peers for Rosalind Russell.
   Performances at 5651 Hollywood Blvd. are tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m. Tickets: $10; (213) 462-6844.

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