Triona Adams delivers a well-written, carefully judged monologue
EVERY little Catholic girl dreams of becoming a nun, Triona Adams tells us, usually right about the time they discover The Sound of Music.
And then they grow out of it. Except that she never quite lost her fascination with convent life, which was why, aged 26, she packed in her promising career as a theatrical agent for the life of an enclosed Benedictine.
Adams’ year in a convent was the basis for the Radio 4 play The Lemon Squeezer, and she has now created this engaging one-woman play, which she performs herself, based on the same experiences. Though clearly new to performing, she delivers this well-written, carefully judged monologue with considerable poise.
When she first heads for St Mary’s, spurred on by an ad in the Catholic Herald and by the Mother Abbess she spoke to on the phone (who sounds exactly like Donald Sinden), she doesn’t tell her agent colleagues where she’s going. The Priory they would understand, she says, but not “a priory”. Though she finds there a life unlike anything she has known, she is drawn back for more.
Her depiction of convent life is well observed and often funny, its community of elderly eccentrics is fondly brought to life in her descriptions. She grew to love the rhythm of the days, dominated by the various religious offices with breaks for Spam fritters and communal recreation, watching Dad’s Army on video. The Benedictine Rule, she says, is all about the small things in life, “a way of living and dying with a bunch of strangers without killing anyone”.
Nun the Wiser, as the punning title suggests, could so easily descend into parody, making fun of these odd women and their outmoded way of life, but what Adams does is much more interesting, touching gently on some complex ideas and emotions. Though she gradually came to realise that priory life wasn’t for her, she speaks of it with fondness and a hint of regret.
Until 31 August. Today 3:45pm.
