The Meaning of the Season

Ask someone why they like attending their church and you will get a variety of reasons from the music to the mystical to the message. But when people in one small town say it´s because a local family doesn´t attend, trouble is just around the corner.

Thus the stage is set for the delightful holiday play, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, written by Barbara Robinson, and superbly directed by Stan Kelly at the ever popular Sierra Madre Playhouse.

Beth Bradley, the teenaged daughter of a nice family in town, played by charming Andrea Sweeney, acts as narrator for the play itself by introducing the circumstances that have brought us to this point before the curtain goes up, and occasionally Beth walks upstage to tell the audience what else is going on. We see the situation through her eyes.

The tale she tells is about the Herdmans, the family that wreaks havoc on the town, especially on the kids at school. They steal kids´ lunches, rough them up, swear, and even smoke cigars (the girls, too). One kid who is particularly effected by this torment is young Charlie Bradley, played by talented Matthew Bond, who tries to dissuade one of the toughs, menacingly played by Dillon McIntire, to stop stealing his dessert by telling him he can get all the sweets he wants at Sunday School.

No good deed goes unpunished, so when Charlie´s mother, Grace, played by gifted Betsy McIntyre, inherits the task of directing the annual Christmas pageant at her church due to the untimely broken leg suffered by the ultra demanding Mrs. Armstrong, played with amusing bossiness by Lidia Ryan, guess who shows up at the audition? And Grace´s husband, Bob, played with much humor by Paul Bond, realizes, Drat, that he will probably have to attend the pageant this year when he would rather stay home.

All six of the meanest kids in town storm into the church and scare everyone else away from volunteering for major roles in the annual pageant, even the coveted role of Mary, usually played by snobbish Alice, played to perfection by Marjory Zuk, who relinquishes the role to big, bad Imogene Herdman, played by Kari Irwin who captures the gentle awakening in the tough girl as she subtly learns what the Christmas story is all about.

None of the Herdmans were ever taught the true meaning of Christmas. Grace endeavors to explain the Greatest Story ever told by reading the Bible, only to have the Herdmans paraphrase the telling into more contemporary terms. This retelling begins to manifest itself into a far more rowdy version and the rehearsal disintegrates into a nightmare when one of the church ladies thinks smoke from a cigar in the Ladies Room is a fire and the fire department is called.

No full rehearsal is ever completed, but the show must go on, and as Grace says to everyone, despite the pending doom that seems to be hanging over the event, this will be "the best Christmas pageant ever."

The magic of this fun play comes when the wild Herdmans, especially Imogene who plays Mary in the pageant, suddenly realize what a Blessed Event the Nativity really is. Watching Imogene´s face change from defiant to compassionate is heart-warming.

An added joy of this particular rendition of Barbara Robinson´s play is the sparseness of the scenery, designed by Kristen Cox. Instead of a busy set cluttered with stuff, most of the locations are mere vignettes that accomplish the job. What was best, after all, this was the "best" pageant ever, were the scenes in the church. The rehearsal hall was the typical bare bones variety with plain walls and a few simple church paintings. The décor for the main part of the church was a single stained-glass window depicting Mary and the baby Jesus.

But the most enchanting thing of all was the sound. If you have ever been in the basement of a small, neighborhood church, or even in main sanctuary of a modest size house of worship in Middle-America, there is a distinct sound about it. There is an echo that sends the sound of footfalls or the scraping of a chair throughout the building. The uncarpeted stage allows these sounds to reverberate through the theater. Even when the curtain is closed between scenes you could hear the furniture being moved.

And when the children sing Christmas carols, the simple voices echo slightly as if we are in some old church in some small town somewhere in America watching the real thing. It was the honesty of the young voices, not all professionally trained, that made it seem like an actual Christmas pageant put on by maybe your own kids. Sheer Magic.

This fun Christmas play runs through December 20, 2009, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, Saturday and Sunday matinees. Check for times at www.sierramadreplayhouse.org . All tickets $20.