Tag: A Christmas Story

THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER – And the best version of this story…Ever

SHORT TAKE:
Family friendly, warmly whimsical, and nostalgic, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a Nativity tale of how an entire town’s misguided preconception of their 75th annual Christmas play gets turned on its head and re-focused by their most unlikely citizens.

LONG TAKE:
There is a wise aphorism that a couple should take care not to spend so much time and attention on the wedding they forget about the marriage. The point being that it is easy to get so caught up in the details of the ceremony celebrating a public, even sacred, event, that you can lose track of the purpose. That can apply to many things, including a Christmas Pageant.

As is my usual custom, I will try to avoid any crucial spoilers.

This cautionary tale is beautifully produced by Kingdom Story Company and distributed by Lionsgate in its new release, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The story presents narratively, as the storyteller, Beth Bradley, recounts a particularly memorable event from her childhood. The format is reminiscent of the generally liked A Christmas Story, though there is a fundamental difference between the two. A Christmas Story focuses on a little boy’s obsession with getting a Red Ryder Air Rifle. This superficiality of theme has always made A Christmas Story ring hollow for me, as it entirely misses what should have been the eponymous point of the story. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever hits the bullseye.

There are two seemingly disparate but notable things about Beth’s home town, Emmanuel, during this remembered year: the 75th annual town Christmas Pageant was on the horizon and there was a family of 6 feral children, the Herdmans, who “terrorize” the town. Young and small but intimidating, the Herdmans have the entire town cowed into letting them alone as they commit petty thefts, start fights and basically disrupt the peace wherever they go. The townsfolk do not like them but do not really know what to do about them.

Providence steps in when the martinet director of the Pageant, who has done the same play, in the same rigid way for as long as memory serves, slips and breaks both legs. The directing responsibility falls (pun intended) to our narrator’s mother, a normally reserved woman who is inspired to step up despite the fact she has no qualifications to take on the job. Then to complicate matters, the Herdmans, for all the wrong reasons, decide to participate in the town’s beloved and jealously protected yearly pageant, scandalizing some and alarming others.

The watershed moment of the story becomes clear through the wise and generous actions of the patriarch of the Bradley family, as he supports his wife’s efforts and brings his family to observe an important service he yearly provides which sheds crucial light on the entire situation.

In another setting this could be the set up for a drama or even tragedy. But this is as light and enchanting as a Mother Goose tale and very funny.

Based upon a McCall magazine article by Barbara Robinson, adapted into a children’s book in 1972, then a stage play in 1982, and filmed as a TV movie in 1983, this story has gotten a lot of coverage. However, this feature film finally gives it the presentation it deserves. Directed by Dallas Jenkins, the brains and stamina behind The Chosen phenomena, this version of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is family embracing, respectful of the Biblical source material, and comedically charming.

Proving the old saw that you never want to act with children or animals as they will upstage you, the child actors are wonderful, confidently commanding every scene they are in. There is an element of endearing caricature to all of the kids, especially the Herdmans, matching the larger than life memories of our adult interlocutor’s childhood encounters with them.

Along with Mr. Jenkins as director, two other veterans of The Chosen have prominent supporting parts: Kirk B. R. Woller, who plays Centurion Gaius in The Chosen, is the kindly Pastor Hopkins, and Elizabeth Tabish, the gentle Mary Magdalene in The Chosen, does a wickedly snarky, almost unrecognizable, turn as one of the domineering overly made-up society dames in town.

It is wonderful to see a film and not have to feel on guard that something deliberately offensive, or condescendingly critical of America’s foundational Judeo-Christian beliefs will unexpectedly pop up.

Though very human and not at all on pedestals, the characters in this story are people whose intentions are good but who have allowed their focus to become misplaced. And, true to form, God uses the most unlikely and smallest of a community to teach a lesson to the relatively powerful.

Go see The Best Christmas Pageant Ever – and bring everyone.

A CHRISTMAS STORY – LOVELY NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE AT ACTS THEATRE

SHORT TAKE:

Lovely Christmas tale, set in 1950’s Americana, of a narrator’s look back on his childhood quest for the ideal present during the weeks leading up to Christmas morning.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Anyone and everyone – children of all ages.

LONG TAKE:

A Christmas Story, which opened December 6, 2019  at ACTS Theatre and plays through December 15, 2019 (GET TICKETS HERE), is the stage play version, which premiered in 2000, based upon the charming classic holiday movie from 1983, which was, in turn, based upon the semi-autobiographical anecdotal book by Jean Shepherd, titled In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash.

The play tale is the same as the movie, narrated by the adult version of Ralphie, a little boy growing up in Indiana in the 1950’s during the weeks leading up to Christmas the year he desperately wanted and fantasized about having “an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time”. Unfortunately his mother, his teacher and even the department store Santa gave the same litany response: “You’ll shoot your eye out!”

While Ralphie’s ploys to obtain this forbidden item create the Christmas tree trunk of the story, the real gems, like ornaments on the branches, are the moments of true Americana which made up Ralphie’s childhood: the bundling up ritual before venturing into the bitter weather to get to school; Ralphie’s fantasies of protecting his family and friends with his BB gun; his father’s constant struggle with their old furnace accompanied by a string of invectives translated for the play into child-appropriate made up words; Ralphie’s friend Flick getting his tongue stuck on a lamppost subsequent to a triple dog dare; his fellow classmate Esther Jane’s obvious crush on him about which he is, at the time, completely oblivious; the eccentricities of his little brother Randy; and most importantly the close knit time he spent with his family. It didn’t matter that the dinners often suffered from routine or his father erroneously thought he was a mechanic. The magic was in the fact the parents and boys were together every night and the quantity of time they spent together AS a family which brings meaning to the real Christmas Story. The moments in a child’s life spent, as my own husband refers to them, MAKING memories.

A Christmas Story is a comedy, in as much as people are naturally funny. It’s not a series of one liners or gags but finds humor in the people we have in our lives, or even the people we are, all of whom find places in this story.  From Mother, “the Old Man” and brother Ralphie, to the bully Farkus and Miss Shields, his fifth grade teacher, all the characters will be quite familiar even to those who have never before seen the movie or this play. These are people who exist in all our lives in one form or another.

Noah Herbert is perfect as Ralphie, the young lead, sweet and ingenuous, he is the embodiment of that innocent time. Elizabeth Harper, as Mother, is the practical center of the family, kindly guiding her family through their antics like a loving human “face palm” of affectionate exasperation. Bobbie Guillory is “The Old Man”, a hard working devoted husband and father, whose amateur mechanics, whimsical commitment to contest entering, and attachment to a uniquely peculiar prize lamp inform many of the family events. Harper and Guillory create warm appealing characters with believable affectionate chemistry. Zac Hammon is the adult version of Ralphie looking back on his family and that particular Christmas with a fond nostalgia and warm wisdom, providing narration for the necessary exposition. Mila Alcantara is sweet and natural as Esther Jane, Ralphie’s crush. Hannah Miller chews the scenery as Scut Farkus, a comical version of the class bully. David Gustafson is adorable as Ralphie’s younger brother. Elliott Mitchell is the hapless Flick, constantly the butt of bad luck. Dorothy Thomason is fun as the stern but well meaning Miss Shields. And rounding out the cast is Dylan Freeman as Schwartz, and Jolie Leubner as Helen, Ralphie’s other classmates.

All the young actors do a magnificent job in their portrayals, timing and enthusiastic characterizations of these 1950’s children.

The set is appropriately always against the backdrop of the family kitchen. The kitchen was the heart and center of Ralphie’s home and life, with occasional forays to a nicely constructed upstairs bedroom to where Ralphie retires to think out loud, write essays of devotion about his Red Ryder gun and contemplate the mysteries of his life. Action outside the kitchen is set in front of the kitchen backdrop. This works on a conceptual as well as practical level, as the consequences of the outside world will eventually return and resolve to a satisfying conclusion there at the kitchen table anyway within the bosom of his family.

Director Clay Hebert, along with assistant Stan Morris and stage manager Lauren Manuel do a terrific job bringing this story together. Much of this stage incarnation echoes true to the film version but I must especially commend the director and his crew in what I personally perceive as a major improvement on the dynamics of the parents. In the 1983 movie Mother, as portrayed by Melinda Dillon, is a mousy creature and Darren MacGavin’s “Old Man” is kind of a clueless bulldozer. But Clay Hebert’s vision transforms those unappealing characters into the charming complementary couple of smart pragmatic Mother and energetic idealist “Old Man,” who we parents would not mind being remembered as. Plaudits go to all the cast and crew for successfully coming together as a troupe to offer this magical Christmas gift down memory lane to Lake Charles.

So go see this warm hearted show, which will conjure nostalgia for the past in the adults, ring true for children in the present, and light a unique lamp in the window for all families who look hopefully towards this Christmas and all the future Christmases to come.