Nun the wiser

The year is 2006, the setting is a little convent in the west of Scotland, and the aim of this play is to make high drama out of convent life and dementia research—a bit of a challenge, you might be forgiven for thinking. A community of nuns (n=27, hence the title of this play, 27) inhabits a distinctly custodial slabby grey set, and is visited by researchers from a US-UK collaboration seeking to extend an established and highly regarded project.

As in most religious orders, members are ageing and numbers falling. Quickly we get to know Sister Miriam, the mother superior, who is erudite, pious, crisp, and no longer young; Ursula, her likely successor, less polished and still middle aged; and their latest recruit—the first in 14 years—Audrey, a wild child fleeing a chaotic upbringing and still very much on probation. Name checks, eccentricities, and reported mishaps, such as cooking disasters, sketch in an offstage, non-singing chorus of nuns who …