Comedy a communion of laughs

Rudy Pazinski is used to getting his knuckles whacked by Sister Clarissa. He can’t learn his catechism. He doesn’t believe in Hell. He’s sick of fish on Fridays and wants to go to public school. It all boils down to this: Being Catholic has become so prickly, he thinks it might be time to “shop around.”

This may not sound blasphemous these days, but it was in Buffalo, N.Y., in the late 1950s, the time frame in which Tom Dudzick has set his comedy “Over the Tavern,” now playing at Penobscot Theatre’s Opera House in Bangor.

Since the play debuted in 1994 at Buffalo’s Studio Arena Theatre, it has been restaged there annually. Otherwise it hasn’t been performed in many theaters around the country. That may be because of an earlier generation of Catholic plays that quickly wore out the standard jokes about nuns, purgatory, and the pope. Or it may be that Dudzick’s plot line takes predictable turns, never really goes anywhere, and then ties up too quickly.

But forget all that. Penobscot Theatre’s production is a crowd pleaser of the most heavenly sort. Director Matthew Arbour, who last rocked laughter from local audiences with “School for Wives,” proves again that he has a particular knack for comic timing. He keeps these actors running, and sets the pace smartly so that just about the time a new joke shows up, you’ve caught your breath. You don’t even have to be Catholic, or even a baby boomer to appreciate the humor, the TV jngles, or the quirky ways humans try to make sense of the world around them. Arbour could have let this show unwind crazily, but he controls it and turns a light comedy into a substantial night of entertainment.

It’s not that anything here is raucously funny. In fact, it’s likely that hard-core Catholics may see the one-liners as something other than religo-ribbing. Yet the show has a poignant humor to it, one that punches and praises. In short, Dudzick affectionately scrutinizes Catholic family life in the same way Neil Simon does Jewish family life and A.R. Gurney — another Buffalo native — does Protestant family life.

Dudzick admits that life above Chet’s Tavern in the shadow of St. Kazimir’s Catholic Church is based on his own upbringing in Buffalo’s Polish East Side. He plays fast and loose with some of the details, but basically, he has said, “This play is wish fulfillment, an alternate way or outcome, a little boy’s protest.”

Rudy, however, is hardly little. Even though he is 12, which makes him the youngest of his three siblings, he has wisdom past his years. Plus he does a hotshot impression of Ed Sullivan. Obviously, the actor in this role has to be both talented and teachable — because he has to be up for the one-man portions of the show and he has to adopt the mannerisms of a “Leave It to Beaver” kid. Zach Robbins, as Rudy, has it all. He’s naturally funny, physically adept and does a mean Ed Sullivan. He carries the show like a champ, and, for all Rudy’s transgressions, Robbins, who is a freshman at Bangor High School, manages to charm more than just the audience by the end of the show.

Juliet Arnold Lisnet, as Rudy’s mother, is a whirl of fierce, maternal love. And Jay H. Skriletz, as his father, is tightly wound and terse.

Amanda Mooney, as Rudy’s blooming sister Annie, is sweetly clueless, and collects her own basket of laughs — one of which comes with a very bad version of a beehive hairdo. Scott Johnson, as the adolescent big brother with “impure thoughts,” is light on his boy-nervous feet. Padraic Andriu Harrison, as the mentally handicapped brother Georgie, has one of the hardest roles to tackle. Dudzick has taken his fair share of criticism for creating a handicapped character that is entirely comic, if not clownish. But the fact is, all these characters are comic, and Harrison, when he isn’t anticipating his next move, is thoroughly funny.

As Ed Sullivan used to say: It’s a rilly good shew.

Penobscot Theatre will perform “Over the Tavern” by Tom Dudzick at 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 5 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through April 22 at the Opera House on Main Street in Bangor. For tickets, call 942-3333.