“Winter Wonderland,” November 10 through December 29

Wednesday, November 10, through Wednesday, December 29

Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, 1828 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL

Had the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's holiday production Winter Wonderland been staged last year as originally intended, it would have marked a significant anniversary, given that it would have been 20 years since the previous version of this Christmas-themed musical revue debuted on the Rock Island stage.

But with the dinner theatre (like so many other theatres) closed for the holidays in 2020, Winter Wonderland, running November 10 through December 29, is now returning to Circa '21 – in altered form – for this year's yuletide season instead. And although a 21st-anniversary presentation may not have the marketing value of a 20th-, staging the revue in 2021 does provide a different number to celebrate.

“That's the year the building was done – 1921,” says Brad Hauskins, the Winter Wonderland author, frequent venue actor, and longtime head of the theatre's performing wait staff of Bootleggers. “A hundred years ago. So going back to 1921 for this show feels kind of cool and relevant to me.”

Like Hauskins' 2000 iteration of Winter Wonderland, his new one also sends its characters on a holiday trip back in time.

“It's a show about a family that goes out to a Christmas-tree farm,” says Hauskins, “trying to experience a little traditional Christmas magic. The place has a bit of a mysterious quality to it, and when they get out there, they discover some of the history of the place – that Santa's Winter Wonderland first opened 100 years ago. So the dad makes a Christmas wish that he could take his family back to a time like that, when everything was simpler and people didn't have the problems they have today. And lo and behold, thanks to Christmas magic, his wish comes true, and they find themselves back in 1921.”

That description, however, is a deceptively simple one.

Recalling the initial plan to have Winter Wonderland produced in 2020, Hauskins says, “Everything was really tentative back then. We didn't know if we were gonna be able to open at all for a while. And then we kind of got the basic plan where we were gonna be able to open, but we were only going to be able to sell 50 seats, and there were going to be other restrictions and guidelines and mandates.”

Adding that, beyond the pandemic, 2020 was a particularly turbulent one in our country (and not merely because of a sure-to-be-contentious presidential election to be held mere days before Winter Wonderland's opening), Hauskins says, “I thought that putting up this really optimistic, happy, carefree sort of diversion of a Christmas show might not feel appropriate. At the same time, I didn't want to make a show that was trying to deal with the uncertainty of COVID and all these things. I didn't want to talk about all the social issues that the country was dealing with. And I certainly didn't want to deal with politics.

“But I definitely wanted the characters I was writing to be living in that world. I was just looking for something that maybe could help them either process it or escape it. I felt like that's what was important – that the characters people were gonna watch in the show had to be living in the same world that the audiences was.”

Consequently, says Hauskins, Winter Wonderland's father character “starts to feel like maybe they belong there [in 1921]. Maybe this is the better place for them, because this world is just not so turbulent and not so difficult, and the air is cleaner, and it's quieter, and there aren't cell phones, and there aren't planes flying over their heads, and things like that.

“So that was kind of my focus,” he continues. “I put them in this real place, and then let them automatically escape it. Send them back 100 years and let them say, 'Here we are, and none of these problems exist!' The only problem with that is they aren't living in their own world anymore.

“There's a lyric in the song 'Winter Wonderland' that weighs heavily into the show: 'To face unafraid the plans that we made.' And to me, that was the hook of what I'm trying to say. That's what living in the present day means. We make plans, we celebrate this holiday in spite of all the things that are going wrong, and we face our plans unafraid. That's a really appropriate statement for what we're trying to do.”

Hauskins admits, with a laugh, that “it's a lot to think about for a friendly little Christmas revue.” But he stresses that the show isn't in any way an assault on holiday happiness, nor does it feature the same musical material employed for the 2000 Winter Wonderland.

“You'll hear a lot of traditional Christmas music,” says Hauskins, “but a little differently from what we did 20 years ago. And all the songs are songs from that [1921] era, but they're not necessarily all Christmas-themed – there's some Irving Berlin, and other songs that we've sort of incorporated into the storytelling.”

Having collaborated on the show's score with Laura Hammes and Mason Moss, Hauskins says, “These two people are so talented, and they just went right along with me – orchestrating it all, arranging all these harmonies, and telling this story through these songs. We had to create tracks, because when we did Winter Wonderland 20 years ago, we played it live. So we were almost starting from scratch here, and all I really kept was this general idea of this place and a family – mother, father, daughter – plus a couple they meet and these magical spirit people who are there with them through the journey.”

(Hauskins adds that the entire 10-person ensemble from the originally-cast 2020 Winter Wonderland – Ashley Becher, Bobby Becher, Derrick Bertram, Erica Lee Bigelow, Cameryn Bergthold, Wrigley Mancha, Mark McGinn, Savannah Strandin, Tristan Tapscott, and Krianna Walljasper – was able to successfully reunite for director Sean McCall's 2021 rendition.)

Among myriad changes that have taken place since 2000, however, one of them has proven especially notable for Hauskins, both in his personal world and in regard to his writing of this new Winter Wonderland: Over the past 21 years, he's become a father of three.

“I don't know where my sensibilities were coming from when I wrote this thing back then,” says Hauskins with a laugh. “Except to say that I was probably writing it more from the perspective of being a kid, and that sort of naïveté is where my experience of Christmas would've come from. But now, yeah, I'm much more rooted in the father's character, and what he expects to bring for his family. I mean, I have teenage kids now. And you have to be able to listen, and know that everything you do isn't always going to be right.

“So my focus has kind of shifted on the dad now. 'What's he looking for?' Well, he's looking to experience everything that they couldn't do last year. He wants to go everywhere, he wants to see all the relatives, go to all the events, buy a real Christmas tree, cut it down like they did when he was a kid … . Everything that they missed out on in Christmas of 2020.

“I thought that might be what people were looking for this year,” says Hauskins. “Things didn't come back as completely as I'd hoped, you know, but I still think the idea is true – that people are looking for all this stuff they missed out on last year. I didn't get to see my family. I didn't get to take them places. We didn't go see shows. We didn't get to see the kids' in their school's Christmas play. We couldn't do anything.

“And I missed being at Circa,” continues Hauskins, who has been employed at the theatre since 1987. “Knowing that every day you're walking in there, people are coming in who only do this once a year. And it's important. It's a big deal. And we cannot take that for granted. This is important to people. It's part of their family structure.”

Hauskins adds, “I'm not somebody that likes to say, 'Okay, I'm just going to string a whole bunch of fun Christmas songs together, and there's gonna be dancing, and a Nativity scene, and we're gonna wear sparkly costumes and make you forget about all the other crap that's going on!' Maybe that's valuable, and maybe that is what people want and I'm wrong. But for me, when I walk out of this show at the end, I'd rather feel good about walking back into the present day, and I'm not afraid of it anymore. I'd rather say, 'Let's make some plans! Let's do some stuff!' To face unafraid the plans that we made.

“Something that I wrote for the show, that I love, is, 'What if my plans fall through? What if it all falls apart?' 'Well, then, you just make new plans.'”

Winter Wonderland runs at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse November 10 through December 29, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)786-7733 extension 2 and visiting Circa21.com.