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Merry melodies: Wayside opens holiday season with musical story of Santa
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By Josette Keelor -- jkeelor@nvdaily.com
MIDDLETOWN -- Beginning on Nov. 28, residents of the Northern Shenandoah Valley will flock to Wayside Theatre wearing their Christmas best. Parents will arrive in suits or skirts, children will hurry through the doors in patent leather shoes to match their red, white and green outfits.
How does Wayside director Warner Crocker know this? Because it happens every year.
Every holiday season, excitement fills the valley as people young and old head to the theater in Middletown to watch the annual holiday extravaganza. This year's show is "Miracle on 34th Street," a play written by Crocker, put to music by Steve Przybylski, and based on the original Hollywood movie, which premiered in 1947.
For some, Crocker says, this is the biggest family event they share all year. Seeing the Christmas show at Wayside becomes tantamount to visiting grandma's house for the holidays or going to meet Santa Claus, he says. "And you'll hear them go 'It's Christmas,' ... and that's how we'll know we've done our job right."
The community's enthusiasm for the show conveys to the cast as well.
"I love spending Christmas like this ... with the family coming and the kids dressed up. They're so excited," says Jim Fleming, who shares the role of Kriss Kringle (or Santa Claus) with Bob Payne, for alternating performances.
"In the end ... it's one of our most favorite times of the year at Wayside," Crocker says, adding, "and that's a wonderful thing."
He always chooses a show that will exhibit the feelings he hopes to inspire in the audience members.
"Miracle on 34th Street" tells the story of a man, Kriss Kringle, who becomes the department store Santa at Macy's on 34th Street in New York after he steps in to save the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. When he begins telling people that he really is Santa Claus, they wonder if he is insane and put him on trial to decide whether he is mentally competent.
The serious undertone of the story is countered with an endearing tale of a mother, Doris Walker, and her daughter, Susan, who are adamant in their beliefs that Santa Claus is a myth. When they encounter Kriss Kringle, they begin to wonder if they are wrong after all.
Portraying any character on stage requires an actor to be believable, but is perhaps more important in a show such as this, which features characters who are also trying to convince each other of a highly questionable truth. Is Kriss Kringle really Santa Claus? And if he isn't, is there, in fact, a real Santa Claus at all?
Actors at Wayside are up to the task of convincing the audience that what they are about to see is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
"Jim has to walk on stage and convince everybody that he's Santa Claus," Crocker says. "Not only be able to convince adults to suspend their disbelief, but also children."
"I've always wanted to play Santa Claus, and I'm really excited about it," Fleming says.
David Maga, who shares the role of defense lawyer Fred Gailey with Alex Sheets, likes his character because he is the primary adult to believe that Kriss Kringle is who he says he is -- Santa Claus.
"It's one of those parts that's so fun to do when you're an actor," Maga says. It's a different sort of role for him, he says.
The roles are double cast in order to accommodate the number of performances Wayside offers from Thanksgiving through Christmas.
Sharing the role with another actor is typically an unusual experience, except at the Wayside holiday show each year.
"You get to see what the scene looks like that you're in," Maga says, and watching the double act the same role is helpful to both actors, who will often "steal" ideas from one another.
Maga and Fleming have worked on Wayside shows before and look forward to working again with so many actors they already know.
"There's a homecoming for actors as well," Crocker says of the cast, which includes Thomasin Savaiano and Aviva Pressman in the role of Doris. Emma Bott and Logan Trask join the adult cast as 8-year-old Susan.
Working with the children in the holiday show is something Crocker looks forward to each year, and he says it really heightens the spirit of Christmas among the cast.
"Their youth and enthusiasm and just unbridled sense of fun is a great way for us to kind of rekindle that in ourselves," he says.
One of the major differences audiences will notice between the stage production of the show and the original movie starring Edmund Gwenn, John Payne and Maureen O'Hara, is that the Wayside version is a musical.
"There's just something about Christmas and music that go together," says Crocker, who wrote the story for the stage several years ago to be performed at Wayside in 2002. This year's show keeps mainly to the same story but is a slightly different version than last time. It keeps parts that Crocker thought went well and cuts out some facets that did not work so well.
The story keeps the same overall theme, however, and emits the spirit of the holiday season with every plot twist and scene change.
"What does Christmas really, really mean?" Crocker says. "That theme is prevalent in that story. It's also prevalent in this particular play."
"Miracle on 34th Street" will play at the Wayside Theatre in Middletown from Nov. 28 through Dec. 27. Performances will be Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Matinees on Dec. 23 and 24 will be at 2:30 p.m. Wayside Theatre will be closed on Dec. 25. Ticket prices are $30 for Friday and Saturday evening performances and $25 for all other performances. Student and senior discounts and group discounts are available on request. Some performances are already sold out. For tickets or more information, call the box office at 869-1776, or visit the Web site, www.waysidetheatre.org.
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