Not being an avid reader or attender of stage plays, I had never heard of Christopher Durang until five or six years ago, when I stumbled upon a cable-produced adaptation of his play "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You." Irreverent humor lampooning religious belief systems is a favorite genre of mine, along with gun-wielding nuns, so I wasted no time in picking up this collection of short plays.

While Durang is basically a humorist, many of his plays involve the lampooning of other plays. This can be a detriment to a reader who, like me, is unable to pick out the subtle stabs at the set design and dialog patterns of other well known playwrites. But it is a minor stumbling block, and not a mjor obstacle to enjoy Durang's offbeat sense of humor.

If you aren't hip to the stage scene, but still enjoy humor with an edge, do what I did. Pick up this collection for "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You", then peruse the rest with an open mind. ( )

I used some of these plays years ago for high school acting class. Now I wonder how we got away with it. Intelligent, surreal, off-color, and extremely literary, Christopher Durang never disappoints. ( )

What makes this collection wonderful, besides containing most of the wildest snippets of Durang, are the prologues and actors' notes for each play. You're given a glimpse of the more subtle aspects of characters that don't always come through in the text. ( )