Page One

SAN FRANCISCO – A hypothetical 1962 television series about a nun who rides a motorcycle and brings “cheer to the less fortunate” is the basis of F. Allen Sawyer’s new comedy “Whatever Happened to Sister George?” which opened Saturday at Theater Rhinoceros in San Francisco. 

“Sister George” is a campy celebration of lesbian themes that appeared in the shadows of certain American movies and television shows at a time when the Hollywood production code forbade explicit references to lesbianism. 

Performed by a cast of five women, most of whom double in multiple roles, and told in an extravagant lesbian drag style, the Theater Rhinoceros production is a bawdy one, filled with double entendres and dirty jokes. 

On the set of the television series being shot in 1962, “Sister George’s” plot turns on the conflict over whether the show should do an up-front segment about its characters’ lesbian identities. 

The show is entirely produced, acted and crewed by lesbians, but none of that is ever acknowledged explicitly in the public forum. 

So the big question for the women working in the show is whether to come out or not. 

The basic structure of “Whatever Happened to Sister George?” has many parallels to the Bette Davis/Anne Baxter movie “All about Eve.” 

In Sawyer’s play, as in the movie, a famous actress – in this case, the one playing the nun in the television series – is approached by a breathless, simpering starstruck fan who will do anything to be part of her hero’s life. 

The upstart fan (Ginger Eckert) then connives her way into the star’s (Stephanie Taylor) life, and turns it on its ear. 

This is a show business world filled with behind-the-scenes backbiting, and the star’s career is changed forever. A nun (Elizabeth Marie) who can really fly upstages her and threatens her career. 

The big difference between “Sister George” and “All about Eve,” of course, is the in-your-face erotic spin. In this bawdy show, all of the women are motivated explicitly by sex in the moment-to-moment decisions of their lives. 

“Whatever Happened to Sister George?” also makes direct references to many other past movies and television shows, other than “Eve.” 

The play borrows from, or contains explicit references to, “The Children’s Hour,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” The Killing of Sister George,” “The Hunger,” “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane,” “I Love Lucy,” “Rebecca,” “Personal Best,” “Ironsides,” “The Flying Nun,” and “Ellen.” 

But that, in fact, becomes the main problem with “Whatever Happened to Sister George?” In the final analysis, the play is more of a slapstick puzzle built around a bunch of in-jokes about old shows, than it is a play. 

Once you get the joke – that it’s structured around references to old movies and television – everything that happens in the story seems predictable. 

In trying so carefully to reference his play to its movie and television forebears, playwright Sawyer even loses track of his story about the conflict around coming out. 

Instead, the play shifts at the end, almost incidentally, the crazy world of several doddering “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” has-beens. The story doesn’t meaningfully play out the consequences of the issues it set up earlier. 

Under Sawyer’s direction, the performances are broad and campy. Sandy Schlechter’s scowling dresser Birdie Coonan is a strong presence reacting silently and disapprovingly to the world around her. 

Costume designer Jeff Simpson has found some nifty Fifties dresses, and a couple of hilarious hats for television series producer Alison Dewitt (Connie L. Noble). 

This is a titillating show. There are lots of locked romantic eyes and heavy breathing. The breathless women run their hands over their own bodies dramatically while they flirt with each other. But it’s all foreplay, and ultimately doesn’t follow through on its own promise. 

“Whatever Happened to Sister George?” runs Wednesday through Sunday, through June 17, at Theater Rhinoceros, 2926 16th St. (at South Van Ness), San Francisco. For reservations, call