It’s not always easy having faith — especially when you’re 12 years old.

You have to answer some pretty tough questions. And in faith, there is no easy answer book.

Why did God create the Earth?

“It’s a science experiment.”

Why did God make us?

“To have fun.”

Meet Rudy Pazinski. He’s the kid spouting the philosophical questions. Sister Clarissa is the nun who just can’t handle his responses.

“See these pills? I have these pills because boys like you refuse to learn.”

In the Whidbey Playhouse production of the comedy “Over the Tavern,” audiences can meet Rudy and the rest of the Pazinskis, a boisterous Catholic family that lives over a bar.

“The focus is on relationships within the family, with their religion and the dichotomy between the two of them,” said Mary Kay Hallen, who portrays Sister Clarissa. “It’s all about working out the differences.”

Rudy (Adam Peckenpaugh) is a kid who doesn’t go by the book and often locks horns with his no-nonsense teacher, Sister Clarissa (Hallen). An older brother (Reid Gerardi Harrison) provides hormonal brawn to Rudy’s brains, a self-conscious sister (Katie Hall) battles her sweet tooth, and a stay-at-home mom (Libby Kuehl) tries to keep it together as a hot-headed father (Joe Stierwalt) loses his cool.

The majority of “Over the Tavern” takes place in a second-story apartment above Chet’s Bar and Grill during a 1959 autumn in Buffalo, N.Y. It also follows youngest son Rudy on his path to catechism at St. Casimir’s Parochial School and his ventures to church.

While Sister Clarissa quotes poetry and scripture, Rudy quotes Mad magazine and Ed Sullivan.

“She’s very old school in her manners and thinking,” Hallen said. “And she has a free-thinking 12-year-old she doesn’t know what to do with.”

At the same time, there’s a wee bit of admiration inside the sister.

“Sometimes I think she was a lot like Rudy when she was younger, but she got it trained out of her over the years,” Hallen said.

Litke has worked long and hard with all of her cast and it shows. The Pazinskis have a family dynamic carefully balanced on egg shells, and the chemistry and flow of this stage family draws you in.

Litke has more than 25 years of experience working with Whidbey Playhouse productions — on stage, behind the curtain and in the director’s chair.

She discovered “Over the Tavern” while the chair for the annual Playday held each January. While searching for scripts to give as a sampling at the annual play selection event, she kept coming across Dudzick’s comedy. She had to hunt down the writer’s management and even the writer himself to get the script, but when it arrived she knew it would be a winner.

“I couldn’t put it down,” Litke said. “This heart-warming drama stole my heart with its 12-year-old hero who’s beginning to question family values and the Roman Catholic Church.”

But just as much as this play is about Rudy, Litke said, the play is about Chet’s redemption from being a physically and psychologically wounded man.

The Pazinskis are fighting the restrictiveness of their faith. Jealously the kids yearn to be like other families — wondering if their happiness comes because they’re not Catholic.

The tavern below is a family business, owned by Chet’s father, and dealt with by bartender Chet who must cover for his father’s drunkenness.

“Chet’s bitter. He’s trapped in his life and lifestyle by circumstances unfairly beyond his control,” Stierwalt said. “He’s angry he never got to pursue his baseball career. He never had a relationship with his father growing up and now he’s mad he can’t tell him to go away.”

Despite his daily demeanor, Chet doesn’t want his kids to have the life he did — he just doesn’t know how to go about it, Stierwalt said.

Underneath that gruff exterior there’s still a man who wants to slow dance with his wife in the kitchen, romance her to the sounds of the radio and sweet talk while the kids are asleep.

After Sister Clarissa makes a surprise house call, this family takes an introspective turn toward the light.

“He evolves and starts to realize if Sister Clarissa can change, so can he,” Stierwalt said. “It affects him and the family profoundly because he realizes he needs to change.”

Stierwalt is a self-described Renaissance man who enjoys politics, theology and philosophy as much as he does brewing beer and playing rugby. And while his table conversation might be a little more refined than Chet’s he said he can still relate to his situation.

“My family, like theirs, wore their hearts on their sleeves,” he said. “There was never a question where you stood. You knew you loved each other, but you never hesitated to say what you were feeling.

The Pazinski’s are an unusual nuclear family for the ‘50s, but typical of the families of the 20th century, Stierwalt said.

Maybe that’s what will allow their story to hit home with audiences.

“If you walk out of this show appreciating your parents and kids a little more, you paid attention,” Stierwalt said.