‘A Little House Christmas’ resonates in today’s world
THEATER REVIEW: Emotions of Dallas Children’s ‘Little House Christmas’ resonate in today’s world
12:01 PM CST on Tuesday, December 4, 2007
By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News
nchurnin@dallasnews.com
Hard times and the prospect of no Christmas presents. A soldier home from the war who doesn’t say much. Parents at a loss as children question the existence of Santa for the very first time.
The world of A Little House Christmas takes place more than a century ago, but the radiant Dallas Children’s Theater production at El Centro College Performance Hall finds the emotional resonance with our own times.
Working with her skillful design team and cast, director Robyn Flatt painstakingly re-creates the 19th-century frontier life that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about so eloquently in a series of nine books. The lights go up on a silent scene in which the family and neighbors mime the building of their wooden cabin (evocatively designed on a revolving stage by Randel Wright), chopping, lugging buckets and pausing occasionally to stretch a weary back.
Pieces of the show may seem familiar to Wilder fans. James DeVita’s adaptation is quilted from anecdotes and characters in Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie and On the Banks of Plum Creek.
Eight days before Christmas, Ma and Pa Ingalls and their young daughters Mary and Laura have invited family and friends to celebrate in their newly built house. The Ingalls ask their girls to be understanding of Uncle George (James Kille, who gives a haunted look to the soldier recently returned from the Civil War). They ask them to get along with annoying Nellie, who brags about the fine things she has in her fancy home in town (a spirited performance by Katherine Freel, who alternates with Kasey H. Weir). They hope the girls will be polite to Mr. Edwards (R. Scott Cantrell with bumbling, bear-like appeal), even if he eats too many of Laura’s favorite sweet potatoes.
Of course, as any parent knows, being nice to so many challenging guests is a lot to ask. And it gets even harder when a storm causes the creek to rise so high that Santa might not be able to deliver gifts.
Lisa Schreiner and Chad Patrick Smith infuse the homespun parents with a nobility of spirit that inspires the solution the girls devise to make Christmas special. On Saturday, young performer Kimberly Kottwitz (who alternates with Audrey Gieseman) as Mary, tossed just the right touch of bossy big-sisterness in the mix, while Madeleine Crenshaw (who alternates with Nikki Reese) brought a pugnacious “Do I have to?” spirit to Laura.
The costumes by Barbara C. Cox brought the atmosphere back to a simpler time as did the careful emphasis on the little things that establish the time period, such as creating their own entertainment with onstage guitar playing by Mr. Cantrell and Mr. Kille for square dances. And then it found its finale with gently crooned Christmas carols which, like this tale, have stood the test of time.
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