[Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You brings us close] to the truth, not through histrionic posturing, but through savage blistering satire. Durang is the American equivalent of an angry young man, his anger directed less toward social and political targets than toward the nightmares of his own personal history. These include the media, the middle-class family, and most of all, the Catholic Church, whose parochial school system Durang sees as an institutional conspiracy to suppress spontaneity and disseminate lies.

The play takes the form of an illustrated lecture by an aggressively rigid nun…. She is instructing a group of children—that is to say, the audience—about the canonical mysteries of Catholicism, and not since young Stephen Dedalus learned of the evils of self-abuse has there been an address designed to have a more corrosive effect on young minds. Aided in her efforts by seven-year-old Thomas...