The virulently pro-abortion and generally skeevy Kathleen Turner is set to play a Catholic Nun on Broadway. What could go wrong? Lots.
Turner plays Sister Jamison Connelly, a foul-mouthed recovering alcoholic who is asked to treat a 19-year-old crystal meth addict and prostitute. Nice.
She’s making her first appearance as a Roman Catholic nun when the play “High” opens this month on Broadway. And, in a divine bit of coincidence, the actress best known for “Body Heat” and “Romancing the Stone” also stars as a suburban mom striving to be named Catholic Woman of the Year in a new film opening at the same time at the Tribeca Film Festival.“For some reason this year it’s my year of Catholicism. Who knew?” says the 56-year-old actress in her rose-filled dressing room at the Booth Theater where she’s putting the finishing touches on Matthew Lombardo’s play.
“I must confess that I don’t believe in any organized religion,” she says. “I happen to think that they’re all men putting words in God’s mouth. That doesn’t work for me, but I certainly believe in belief and faith.”
I personally can’t stand Kathleen Turner. To me, she always seems like the hyper-annoying love child of Brenda Vaccaro and Harvey Fierstein (if such a thing were possible), except without the talent and the good looks. Blech.
You know how they say there are not enough parts for talented middle-aged women? That is obviously not true.
April 21, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Last night I was reading a review of this play in the WSJ and it was 90% negative.
"Was Kathleen Turner ever an actor? Maybe, but she's not one anymore. All she does nowadays is waddle onstage and hawk the self-parody that long ago became her stock in trade. . . . Ms. Turner's Janie-One-Note performance is so thickly mannered as to suggest that the producers of "High" have engaged a Kathleen Turner robot instead of the real thing. She rattles off her lines in a hoarse, staccato baritone voice that sounds as if it had been brought into being through daily doses of Drano administered by mouth, and she never does anything that you can't see coming several hundred miles away." Apparently the reviewer shares your appreciation for Turner. With reviews like that perhaps it won't last long.
April 21, 2011 at 1:48 pm
There certainly seems an anti-Catholic market that Broadway plays to. Broadway is all about big financing and marketing. The deep pockets of production simply will not gamble on something that has no projection of profit based on market research. It's not all about the art and the talent, by any means. There was an article in the New Yorker awhile back and it was fascinating — it laid out in detail how marketing honchos through focus groups in marketing, I believe that was a movie, they became aware of the anti-Catholic sentiment (the bigotry or hatred) expressed in focus groups and made a calculated risk to go with it and in marketing even played that up. So then you have movie stars and the talent when they work the press ramping up the production saying things that we as Catholics feel off-kilter. The stars don't just say random things to the press, it's cleared with management and they are well aware of the "controversy" in fact they court it and desire it because let's face it anti-Catholic bigotry sells big right now. Particularly things that mock nuns or priests or portray them as caricature.
Since Ms. Turner doesn't believe in any organized religion, to play characters who do believe and profess membership, albeit flawed and human, and don't regard it as "men putting words in God's mouth" but regard worship to God in common with others to be essential to a life of faith, then I expect it will be quite a stretch and challenge to her acting chops to take on these roles playing honest to goodness believing Catholics!
April 21, 2011 at 2:52 pm
Hey, she's in a Yoga pose so she's accurately portraying a good percentage of nuns. And she supports Obama and is pro-choice. Seems pretty accurate to me.
April 21, 2011 at 3:14 pm
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April 21, 2011 at 4:08 pm
the show is closing so it seems that people are in fact not interested.
April 25, 2011 at 12:23 am
Katherine Turner is to being a nun like a crack head is to helping your grandmother cross the street.