A Kid’s Christams What Is Pulled Together By The Kids Is Torn Apart By The Between-Scenes Choir In ‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’
“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” through Dec. 16, at the Spokane Civic Theatre Call 325-2507
The kids are the best thing about “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” which is a good thing because this is a show about kids.
To be precise, it’s about some truly rotten kids, the six Herdman kids, who almost (but not quite) ruin the church Christmas pageant. They’re tough, they’re crude and they’re mean, but they’re also lovable as played by this pack of six young actors at the Civic.
Meghan Wittman is especially good as Imogene Herdman, the punkish older sister. As the story develops, Meghan gives Imogene a tender core. When she holds the doll, representing the Baby Jesus, it’s almost too heartbreaking to bear. This scene is the emotional center of this play, and is as heartwarming a moment as you’re likely to find.
The other Herdman kids - Ben Downey, Ryan Flanery, Connor Haffey, Matt Downey and Sarah Watkins - are also great in this show. Sarah, as the tough little Gladys, is especially precocious.
The Herdmans aren’t the only kids of note. Wysteria Johnston gives one of the best performances of the show as the put-upon Beth Bradley, whose mother is desperately attempting to stage the pageant. Abram Manion is also great as her brother, Charlie Bradley.
Despite all of this good work, I found this overall production to be more than a little perplexing.
I went away from it feeling let down. Instead of building to a hilarious and emotional climax, as it ought to, it has a lackluster feeling throughout, and I think I know why.
In an effort to pad out this extremely short play (it is actually intended as a children’s theater piece) director John G. Phillips has added a number of church-choir songs, which are performed between scenes. The pretext is that this is the church choir practicing, but I never really bought this as part of the story. It just seemed like an interruption every 10 minutes, and too often it stopped the play’s comic momentum dead. Nothing like the “Hallelujah Chorus,” performed as a sextet, to slow a play down.
The choir was crammed into one wing of the stage, so there was absolutely nothing to occupy our eyes during the songs. For another thing, the music was good, but no more noteworthy than what you might hear from probably 30 different church choirs in town.
Also tacked on was a Thanksgiving pageant scene to open the show, which was fairly effective, and a Herdman “rap” number, which was not. The kids gave it their best, but it took the kids completely out of character. Punks who rap? It appeared to be air-lifted into the show from nowhere, which I suppose it was.
This show already had enough suspension-of-disbelief problems without that. The Herdman kids started from a disadvantage because of the decision to make them up as punks. Maybe this is an adult’s idea of what poor welfare kids look like, but I would have found them more believable as simply scruffy.
The adult cast didn’t serve the show well either. Liz Manion as the mom and Rick Douglas as the dad both gave stiff performances. Manion uses exasperated hand gestures to the point of over-use.
The Civic tried very hard to stretch this one-act play, but to me, at least, it seemed that they stretched it out of shape. , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo