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| Ken Howard, Diane Kagan. |
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| Stefan Schnabel, Joseph Warren, John Christopher Jones, Gastone Rossilli, Diane Kagan, Edward Grover, Ken Howard. |
A tasteless, semi-absurdist, black farce about a household of
New Haven Jesuits, taking place in 1968 on the day Robert F. Kennedy was
assassinated. “Little Black Sheep is
a hate letter to Scully’s Catholic past,” commented John Simon of this
sometimes incoherent satire In it, Anthony Scully introduces
various stereotypical characters or, rather, caricatures, to underline his point
that, as Edwin Wilson noted, “this world of religion, faith, decency and
integrity is falling apart, and that these men are the Little Black Sheep of
the Whiffenpoof Song.”
Among the dramatis personae are the alcoholic Father Superior
Finley (Joseph Warren); Vinnie Caputo (Gastone Rossilli), a campy drag queen of
a priest; Jack Hassler (Ken Howard), a great-looking, vain, seductive, phony of
a priest; Sister Mary Charles (Diane Kagan), the sex-hungry Dominican nun he
has seduced who wants to marry him and gets him to strip to the waist; Willie
Schmidt (Stefan Schnabel), the Gestapo-like German housekeeper who runs the
household as if he were Hitler; Michael George (John Christopher Jones), an
idealistic, disillusioned young scholastic who becomes disgusted with the
antics of his colleagues; Johnnie Rock (Edward Grover), a foul-mouthed,
liberal-minded priest; and Henry Morlino (Pierre Epstein), a civil servant..
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| Edward Grover, Pierre Epstein. |
They run around the House of Study frantically, occasionally
dashing outdoors to administer last rites to auto crash victims who are always
having accidents at the nearby corner, talking on the phone, and running up and
down the stairs.
There was little absolution from the critics who splashed
lots of unholy vitriol on Little Black Sheep for
its lack of clarity over where it intended to get laughs, and where not; for
its vague point of view “other than blind, unquestioning hatred,” as Clive
Barnes described it; its shallow characters; and its indecisive style. Barnes
called it an evening of “deadening triviality lost in a daze of pretensions.”