“Sister Act” a hokey, funny, musical spoof about a cabaret singer, gangsters and nuns

Delightfully clever and funny, the musical lark “Sister Act” is feminist as well. It revolves around the tribulations of Deloris Van Cartier (a smashing Patina Miller when I saw it, now Raven-Symoné), who does a raunchy, gyrating “Take Me to Heaven” number in a nightclub run by her hoodlum boyfriend Curtis Jackson (Kingsley Leggs). But after she decides to leave him, she sees him shoot a suspected informer. Fearful of what he might do to her, she races away to the police. Indeed, the gangster orders his men to find and kill her. But the cop (Chester Gregory), who turns out to be an old school chum, hides her out at a convent.

“Harvey” is cute but dated fantasy about living the right life

“Harvey” is a cute fantasy for adults produced in 1944, a difficult era when some Americans were perhaps considering the meaning of life in the wake of the horrors of war. It was a time when a sermon of how to live the right life, proposing simple goodness against social climbing, could win a Pulitzer Prize for its author Mary Chase. That wouldn‘t happen today: there are no hard edges even in the work‘s social criticism.The play lacks bite.