I admit I always think about A Christmas Story with a bit deeper nostalgia than some people. I, too, grew up in a small Midwestern town, but it’s not that commonality making me smile. I was, I believe, the only little girl in town with a Red Ryder carbine action air rifle – or, as we usually referred to it, a bb gun. After the traditional but surprisingly perfunctory warning from my mother about shooting someone’s eye out, I was let loose on the surrounding landscape and never inflicted significant damage on things living or inert.
The Rep has chosen A Christmas Story for its holiday offering, and it’s a production designed to appeal to all ages beyond the script. The tale is of a boy and his family in a small town in the Midwest before television appeared in living rooms. It’s just before Christmas, and Ralphie’s heart’s desire is a Red Ryder bb gun. As the big day approaches, he plots a campaign to convince his parents that he should have it, but nothing, of course, seems to go the way he wants.
Ralphie is Charlie Mathis, who charmed us as Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird, and he carries the lead with poise and considerable zest. Actually, there are two Ralphs, the boy and the grown Ralph, played by Ted Deasy, the narrator looking back at his childhood escapades. Sometimes he appears in the house he’s growing up in, the adult Ralph watching his younger self. It’s a modulated, careful approach that could easily have turned into sticky sweetness, but this is careful and merely pleasantly nostalgic.
Ralphie’s dad, referred to as The Old Man, comes to us courtesy of Brad Fraizer. The physical comedy for him, per Seth Gordon’s direction, is broad and well-played, especially an episode with a ladder, as things get giddier and giddier during the course of the show. It’s not just the Bumpus neighbors’ dogs that send him flying.
Laurel Casillo gives us a calm mother whose constant dinner menu of meatloaf and cabbage must surely be another figment of a child’s imagination. Except for that air rifle thing, she has more of a challenge with Ralphie’s little brother Randy, Spencer Slavik, wailing and weeping with believable fervor when he’s not hiding in one spot or another. (One wonders what contemporary childhood behavioral assessments would make of this kid.)
Ralphie’s gang of pals are charmers, Scut Farkas (Tanner Gilbertson), Schwartz (Rhadi Smith) and Flick (Dan Wolfe), the latter being he of the unfortunate flagpole episode. The two young women who deal with those rascals are Ana McAlister, as Esther Jane, who sorta likes Ralphie, and Gigi Koster as Helen, who dazzles their long-suffering teacher, Miss Shields (Jo Twiss) with her book reports.
Director Gordon’s creative team includes Michael Ganio as scenic designer. While the house is warm and endearing, it’s the Higbee Department Store that brings us into fantasy and perhaps visions of the 10th floor of Famous-Barr when we were kids, an ice mountain for Santa Claus. Clothing looks somewhat vintage without being cringe-worthy, courtesy of costume designer David Kay Mickelsen, and if that seems faint praise, pay attention to the back of the green coat one of the girls wear, which caused two women in the audience near me to murmur in admiration.
This is a fine thing to introduce kids to live theatre, silly and understandable without any ghosts clanking around the way they might be in that other Christmas warhorse. (I know. I love Dickens, but the Cratchit posse needs a rest. Why hasn’t anyone taken the BBC Radio play, Christmas at Dingley Dell and put it onstage?) Even the numerous teenagers in the audience seemed to have a good time. Fine family entertainment.
A Christmas Story
through December 23
Repertory Theatre St. Louis
Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts
130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves
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