✭✭✭✭✩

music & lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, book by Joseph Robinette, directed by Mary Frances Moore

Theatre Aquarius, Dofasco Centre, Hamilton

December 6-22, 2024

“Ralphie To The Rescue!”

Theatre Aquarius has a major hit on its hands with its production of A Christmas Story: The Musical. The 1983 movie of A Christmas Story is already one the most popular Christmas movies. This 2010 musical by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, the duo who wrote Dear Evan Hansen (2015), could easily become one of your favourite Christmas musicals. It’s fun and inventive with memorable songs, lots of dancing and a chorus of children. The Theatre Aquarius production has an ideal cast and a knock-out design. It’s a great family show you may very well want to see more than once.

The programme states that the musical is based both on the 1983 movie and on the book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (1966) written by Jean Shepherd. Shepherd (1921-99) was best-known as a radio host who had an overnight slot at WOR New York (1956-77) during which he narrated semi-autobiographical stories about his own childhood. Some of these were collected in In God We Trust, including “A Christmas Story”.

The musical begins with an overture during which Mark Crawford as Shepherd walks past a Salvation Army Santa who manages to guilt Sheperd into pitching ever more money into his pot. Sheperd then speaks into an old-fashioned stand-up microphone to tell his story, thus giving us the impression that we are a live radio audience in the 1950s.

The musical is set in 1938 in Hohman, Indiana, Shepherd’s fictional name for his own home town of Hammond, Indiana, and the main character, nine-year-old Ralphie Parker, is a fictionalized version of himself as a boy. It is December 1st and Ralphie has one goal that overrides all others. He must make it clear to his parents that there is only one thing he wants for Christmas – a “Red Ryder Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing [a sundial] that tells time”.

The musical is structured around Ralphie’s various attempts to get his gift message through to his parents. He mails his mother an ad for the rifle which she discards in disgust. “You could shoot your eye out”, she exclaims, in a statement that all subsequent adults use in rejecting the idea. He tries to make his essay or “theme” on what he wants for Christmas especially good, hoping a high grade from his teacher Miss Shields will somehow soften his parents’ resistance. He even tries telling a bored department store Santa about it – all to no avail.

Thanks to multiple reprises many of the tunes are quite memorable. This is especially true of the opening chorus “It All Comes Down to Christmas” that uses the first seven notes of the chorus of “Jingle Bells” as part of its melody. The song is so catchy it’s surprising it hasn’t been adopted as a Christmas song itself. What makes the show particularly fun are the fantasy sequences that arise when Ralphie is daydreaming. The best of these occurs when Ralphie is in class dreaming about the rifle and imagining saving Miss Shields from the two bullies who pick on him every day. “Ralphie to the Rescue!” is written in the style of a theme song for a kiddie television show about a white-clad hero of the Old West. Director Mary Frances Moore and choreographer Robin Calvert think of a series of dire circumstances that Ralphie handily overcomes. The beginning of Act 2 is also a hoot with a chorus of dancing legs in fishnet stockings that look just like the lamp Mr. Parker is so proud of having won in a crossword contest.

The show has an idea cast. Mark Crawford, now best known as a playwright, has a warm, comforting voice as Jean Shepherd. Once Shepherd’s radio narration segues into action on stage, Shepherd looks on with Crawford adding a gentle irony to his comments as he guides us through the story.

14-year-old Finn Kirk is really quite amazing as Ralphie. He has a strong high voice that can really put across a song and he is a very fine actor able to convey Ralphie’s complex emotions, often a mixture of embarrassment, fear and surprise, just with a facial expression. Kirk makes us sympathize with Ralphie from the beginning. The boy may think he is a wimp, but the strength of his desire for his rifle shows he is not. Kirk makes it perfectly believable that Ralphie would eventually snap after too much bullying from his antagonist Scut Farkus and attack him back.

10-year-old Addison Wagman plays Ralphie’s brother Randy so well you would never know she was female. Wagman’s songs in harmony with Kirk are a pleasure and she displays a keen sense of comedy in the hilarious scene where Randy is trapped in a too-tight snowsuit.

Adam Brazier and Jamie McRoberts make a fine pair as Ralphie’s parents known as the Old Man and Mother. It is great to see Brazier on stage again after his star turns as Sky in Mamma Mia! In 2000 and Joey in Pal Joey at the Shaw Festival in 2004. He still has a smooth powerful voice and elegant way of moving. What is a bit disconcerting is his mugging and general overacting. He certainly never used to indulge in that and it doesn’t really help to make the wimpy Old Man funnier.

McRoberts makes mother the stabilizing force in the family, and we are really on her side when she views the leg lamp as unsightly. Her clear, soothing voice is perfect for Mother’s main song “What a Mother Does” which makes us believe this is a 1940s woman who is quite satisfied to be a homemaker.

As Ralphie’s teacher Miss Shields, Dharma Bizier has the fun of playing a strait-laced teacher in reality and a sexy speakeasy dancer in Ralphie’s fantasy. In one of Pasek and Paul’s cleverest scenes they make the show’s refrain “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out” into the vampy song the fantasy Miss Shields sings with style. This scene is also the only tap number in the show with Bizier as its expert focus and members of the adult and children’s chorus as backup dancers. It’s an unexpected, well-imagined sequence that won a huge round of applause.

Lee Siegel, one of the best known members of the cast, has little time on stage in his main role as Santa. This is not the usual portrait of the jolly old elf, but rather a drunken, grumpy old man who can’t wait till his shift is over. His snarly rendition of “Up on Santa’s Lap” helps cut through the general cloud of nostalgia that surrounds the action.

Hailey Balaz and Shakeil Rollock are entertaining as Ralphie’s fellow wimps Schwartz and Flick. Rollock deserves extra credit for so realistically speaking during one scene as if his tongue were stuck to a flagpole. The wimps’ bullies, Scut Farkus and Grover Dill played by Eric Dahlinger and Nicole Norsworthy, are noteworthy for their dancing prowess and eye-catching mid-air spins.

Brandon Kleiman has designed one of the more elaborate sets seen at Theatre Aquarius which includes a two-storey house for the Parker family, brimming with peeriod detail and cut away so we can see Ralphie and Randy’s bedroom and the stairs that lead to it. The front of the house flies down on occasion and the whole set can retreat so that other set elements can glide in from the sides or fly down in front. Kleiman has also designed a wide array of costumes from everyday ‘40s wear for everyday scenes to Western gear and nightclub outfits for fantasy scenes. His most imaginative costumes are the table lamp costumes for both male and female dancers that turns them into replicas of the Old Man’s leg lamp from the waist down.

The show is a thorough delight that leaves you marvelling at the talent that all young people have in the chorus and especially in the super performances of Kirk and Wagman. This celebration of children and of a time of shared values and the gentle chiding of folly perfectly suits the holiday season. Add Theatre Aquarius’ A Christmas Story to you to do list and hope the company brings it back.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Finn Kirk as Ralphie, Addison Wagman as Randy, Jamie McRoberts as Mother and Adam Brazier as the Old Man; Mark Crawford as Jean Sheperd; Finn Kirk as Ralphie and Nicole Norsworthy as Grover Dill; Addison Wagman as Randy and Finn Kirk as Ralphie with the Children’s Chorus. © 2024 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: theatreaquarius.org.