17
Nov
2015
I must confess: When I first saw the Jimmy Stewart film It's a Wonderful Life on TV in the early 1980s, I was not a fan. Was I, I wondered, the only person on the planet who thought the story overly sentimental and a bit of a melodramatic mess? As I was to learn, I was not, for when the film was first released in 1946, some considered it a disappointing addition to director Frank Capra's oeuvre. Although I have begrudgingly come to accept the movie on its own terms over the years, it was with a bit of trepidation that I went to see the November 12 preview of the musical production A Wonderful Life at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse. Would this, my first published review, be my "outing" as a Scrooge?
I'm on record stating that I was "Les Mis-ed out" after seeing three local productions of Les Misérables, and facing a fourth, over a year-and-a-half span. Yet after attending the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's version on Friday, my love for the material is renewed, as director Jerry Jay Cranford's staging adds intimacy while still possessing the grandeur of composers Alain Boublil's and Claude-Michel Schönberg's musical masterpiece.
The Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse and director Kimberly Furness have done it again, crafting a family production that's charming and a whole lot of fun for both the kids and the adults in the audience. My partner's nine-year-old daughter Madison and I enjoyed Friday's performance of Freckleface Strawberry: The Musical immensely, even though neither of us is at all familiar with the children's-book character the show is based on.
The Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse opened its presentation of Miracle on 34th Street on Friday, and if you're familiar with the 1947 film classic this musical version is based on, you should know that Laila Haley, who portrays Susan Walker, isn't on a par with the movie's Natalie Wood. She's actually so much better than Wood that it's not even funny.
The Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's Jack Frost Saves Christmas is the most adorable children's play I've ever seen. Okay, it's also the only children's play I've seen since... well, since I was a child. Still, it brought out the kid in me as I danced and sang along - at the appropriate, invited times, of course - and I wasn't alone; the children in attendance at Saturday's performance, including the two I brought along with me, laughed and danced and shouted exclamations of delight at the play's proceedings.
I've never seen a production of Forever Plaid, but that didn't seem to affect my enjoyment of the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's production of the musical's sequel, Plaid Tidings. Thanks to a quick recap of the events from its predecessor, it was immediately clear that this show would concern a 1950s vocal quartet that had died, but was sent back to Earth to perform a Christmas show in order to prove their Plaid-itude. Or something like that.
It's been more than 20 years since I read Harry Allard's series of "Miss Nelson" children's books, but it's hard to forget Viola Swamp, "the meanest substitute teacher in the whole world." Miss Nelson Has a Field Day, currently playing at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, features Swamp (Liz J. Millea) as the no-nonsense alter-ego of Miss Nelson, the kindly math teacher at Horace B. Smedley Elementary School. The show is as funny as I remember the books being, and judging from the laughter that was constantly erupting from the audience of mostly elementary-school students at Friday's matinee performance, I wasn't the only one who thought so.
