Pop quiz: There are four nuns on ice in your freezer. What do you do?

A: Call the cops.

B: Call the Vatican.

C: Put on a show.

If you answered C, then by all means head straight to Gleasner Hall on Erie Community College’s North Campus, where an amped-up, camped-up, all-male production of “Nunsense!” is now dispensing its trademark brand of mildly blasphemous entertainment to the Catholic masses.

If you answered A or B, I would recommend abstinence.

O’Connell and Company’s production of this latest in Dan Goggin’s irrepressible series of nostalgia-fueled musicals takes audiences back to the series’ humble beginnings.

Here’s the setup: Five lively nuns with a sordid history involving a leper colony off the French coast and a fateful journey to a Hoboken convent are struggling to deal with the recent death of most of their order after a fatal incident involving a batch of tainted vichyssoise soup.

They’ve managed to give a proper Catholic burial to most of the recently departed, but ran out of funds before they could bury the four poor souls now languishing in the convent freezer. If they can’t come up with some cash—and quick — the convent may have to shut down.

The nunly quintet, taking its cues from “Sister Act” and a long line of films and musicals before it, seeks its salvation in the fundraising power of musical theater.

This production, which follows the script of the very first “Nunsense!” but tosses in an all-male cast, is directed with keen attention into the series’ supremely hammy brand of humor by Mary Kate O’Connell, who must rank as Western New York’s resident “Nunsense!” expert.

Its cast, led by Guy Tomassi as the mother superior, does its level best to lead the show through Goggin’s pastichey score, which features a string of genuinely charming numbers. Highlights came with Tomassi and Dudney Joseph’s “Just a Coupl’a Sisters,” Joey Bucheker’s ridiculous number “Soup’s On (The Dying Nun Ballet),” and Nicholas Lama’s expertly executed puppet piece “So You Want to Be a Nun.”

On the surface, it might seem tempting to view Goggin as a sort of campy, cut-rate Kander and Ebb, but his songs demonstrate a broad fluency in the eclectic styles of 20th century musical theater that keep this musical afloat though its various nunsequitors (sorry).

The show will certainly appeal to those who recall their days in Catholic school or C. C. D. with a mix of fondness and dread, though it may be a tougher lift for those with no personal relationship to the faith — or anyone whose view toward such material tends toward the sanctimonious.

The biggest trouble here, as usual, is O’Connell and Company’s oversized home in the Eisenhower-era high school auditorium known as Gleasner Hall. The intimacy of O’Connell’s former venue is much missed here, in a campy piece that would surely garner more genuine laughs in a less formal setting. With an elevated stage and cavernous space, the stakes seem far too high.

That being said, it’s still great fun to watch these performers sink their teeth into the juicy characters Goggin has written with so much obvious love and affection. “Nunsense: AMen!,” for all its campy humor and unlikely plot points, remains a worthy tribute to the brave and sometimes quirky women in habits who have shown that the personal and the spiritual can happily coexist.

cdabkowski@buffnews.comnull