Taught by 'Sister Mary'

Playwright Christopher Durang had all but given up hope that his 1980 off-Broadway hit "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You" would be made into a movie. Durang initially sold the movie rights to an independent producer in 1985. Yet while other hit plays from the time with Catholic themes--such as "Mass Appeal" and "Agnes of God"--were produced as films, "Sister Mary" languished.

But after 16 years, several title changes, more than 15 different version of the script and two new producers (Kirk Stambler and Victoria Tennant), "Sister Mary" has finally made it to the screen, albeit the small one.

Now titled "Sister Mary Explains It All," the comedy premieres Sunday on Showtime. Diane Keaton, Brian Benben, Jennifer Tilly, Wallace Langham and Laura San Giacomo head the cast. Marshall Brickman, who won an Oscar for co-writing "Annie Hall" with Woody Allen, directed.

Set in the early '80s, the comedy takes place on a winter's evening at the annual Christmas lecture given by the charming but stern Sister Mary (Keaton). As a teacher, Sister Mary has taught her students to memorize the rules and dogma of the Catholic Church. A stickler for every rule, Sister Mary harbors a resentment against Pope John XXIII and the 1964 Vatican Council for liberalizing the church.

This evening, four of her former students (Benben, Langham, San Giacomo and Tilly) return to present a version of the third-grade Christmas pageant they performed 20 years before.

The quartet, though, has returned not to praise their former teacher but to confront her. Their outrageous performance flies in the face of Sister Mary's belief system, and her lecture takes on a dark, ominous tone.

Durang acknowledges that the Catholic Church wasn't thrilled with "Sister Mary," so he believes the controversy surrounding the comedy may have been one of the main reasons it took so long for it to be produced as a film.

Brickman, says Durang, read all 15 previous drafts of the screenplay. "He gave me good feedback," says the award-winning playwright. One of the changes Brickman and the producers discussed with Durang was updating "Sister Mary."

"[That] made me very uncomfortable," Durang says. "I think Sister as a character doesn't exist as clearly now as she did back [in the 1980s]. We decided to place the movie back in time, kind of close to where the play was set. That is significant because the students who show up went to school in the '50s and '60s, which is the time frame I knew."