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The smell of warm gingerbread cookies, Christmas carols echoing in the background, a tree illuminated with multicolor lights and the resounding, mocking phrase, “You’ll shoot your eye out,” are all staples of Christmas in America.
For those who are unfamiliar with “You’ll shoot your eye out” or the classic movie that spawned this joke, I suggest you move from under your rock and head over to the Penobscot Theatre to see the stage adaptation of “A Christmas Story,” written by Philip Grecian and directed by Nathan Halvorson.
This movie and, transitively, this play, have become American classics because the quintessential American family is depicted. The oafish father, who thinks he knows more than he does and is constantly trying to assert his masculinity, is offset by the quiet but quick-witted mother, who takes jabs at the father without him realizing it.
The whole story is narrated from the perspective of Ralphie. He approaches many common holiday wishes and conflicts of American children with innocence, and the hilariously melodramatic narration of his older-self, Ralph, brings to life what was going through young Ralphie’s head.
Halvorson nailed the style of this script. The best scenes in the play were the hyperbolic fantasies showing Ralphie’s imaginative depiction of the world.
His daydreams include saving the day as a cowboy, being stricken with blindness after his parents washed his mouth out with soap as punishment, and his teacher actually being the wicked witch from “The Wizard of Oz,” with his mother as a flying monkey. The child actors really seemed to pick up the comedy naturally in these scenes, as they let their imaginations run wild.
Nathan Manaker, a fifth grade student at Asa Adams Elementary School, was particularly impressive in his role as Ralphie’s younger brother Randy. He was a natural performer and his line, “Daddy’s gunna kill Ralphie,” was delivered so perfectly that it earned him the loudest laughs of the night.
Arthur Morrison as the “feared furnace-fighting” father did a good job acting out his anger in a comedic way. Had the anger been too unforgiving, the comedy would have died. He found the right inflection to give his character a lovable quality.
The two characters who really brought the script to life were Ralph and Ralphie. Dominick Varney, as Ralph, the narrator of the piece, could have easily just played it as “the narrator,” but he avoided this path entirely and developed a unique character of his own. Ralphie, played by Nick Danby, had an extremely expressive face, which made fantasy sequences and small tragedies in his life hilarious.
In the infamous scene when Ralphie’s mother forces him to wear a pink bunny suit — which, if possible, was pinker and fluffier than the one in the movie — Danby’s face was priceless. Both Ralph and Ralphie worked in complete sync and made the audience feel like children again, while bringing an entirely fresh approach to the piece.
Doing a show like this is clearly going to invite the comparison to the movie, but this production was unafraid of the comparison. There were noticeable differences in the way certain characters were portrayed, but they worked well within the context of the piece and provided a more unique interpretation and portrayal of the American family than if it had been directed exactly like the movie.
There were a few times when the production let the style run away with the honesty and spontaneity of the moment. For instance, after the father whispered the curse word that Ralphie said to the mother, played by Jeri Misler, she screamed.
However, there was no pause or any time to let her to process what he had said, so it came off as an empty line. This happened a few times, which made the lines seem rehearsed, as if the actors were just waiting to say them, rather than coming up with them on the spot.
The pantomime during the driving sequence also took away a bit from the honesty of the moment. The wheel was not given any weight and instead was whipped around and was not endowed with a solid frame, breaking the suspension of disbelief. It was also broken whenever the actors acknowledged the presence of the older Ralph with a glance as he was walking through a scene as a sort of omniscient Christmas ghost.
The choice to use a voice-over for Santa Claus instead of a live actor was also, frankly, a bit of a letdown. While Varney portrayed an elf in this scene and kept the humor alive, the staging did not work as well as it could have. It is possible that Santa was written in the script as a voice-over, though, so the blame should not necessarily be thrown on the production in this case.
One of the characters said that they were going to see Santa “live and in person.” The audience would have benefited to see him as well, because watching the children react to a Saint Nick that completely foiled all of their expectations would have been hilarious.
Santa Claus not physically showing up did not ruin the production, which was funny and worked on many different levels. The main portion of the show, for instance, did not use the entire stage, which gave the production an intimate feeling. The design by Erik Diaz fit the production and the various spaces that needed to be shown very well. The lighting design by Shon Causer subtly directed the audience’s focus to different spots in the set when needed.
The actors, meanwhile, needed nothing to help their focus, as each one seemed incredibly invested in the performance — the children, in particular. The cast and crew came together and told a classic story that could only be told in America.
Before you head home for the Holidays, make sure that you visit the Bangor Opera House to see this memorable production. You’ll leave with a little Christmas cheer and a mocking voice in the back of your head reminding you that, if you’re not careful, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”
