Review: Irving Berlin's WHITE CHRISTMAS At Bucks County Playhouse
The right show for the right season, at the right theater
Everyone knows the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye musical, a great story surrounding a jukebox musical collection of Irving Berlin tunes mostly already written, but still toe-tapping, stick-in-your-head fun. No wonder it's been so successful on stage; has it really only been on stage for 20 years? Did the show really come after the film? It all seems impossible.
Director Hunter Foster is staging it at Bucks County Playhouse, a theater that could itself, as with its town of New Hope, appear in a painting on a Christmas card. The production stars Broadway performers Jeremiah James and Jarran Muse as fellow Army soldiers and entertainers Bob Wallace and Phil Davis, the toasts of the Ed Sullivan Show. James and Muse are fine dancers and singers as well as actors - which is both wonderful for the production, but also its main flaw James and Muse don't feel totally in synch as a dance team because these hoofers are hoofing in two different styles. James feels as if he's delivering the muscular, angular techniques of Gene Kelly, while Muse has a looser, more relaxed technique very much like Sammy Davis, Jr.
But the show isn't made up of Wallace and Davis teaming up to entertain studio audiences - the guys have to navigate life, love, warm weather at a winter Vermont ski lodge, and their former commanding officer. The result of the combination can be summarized as every complication imaginable after saying, "Hey kids, let's put on a show!" Ashley Blanchet and Kaitlyn Frank are delightful as sister act and love interests, The Haynes Sisters; Blanchet, as Betty, delivers a magnificent "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me" while as a team they're perfect in "Sisters."
Richard E. Waits is a formidable retired General Henry Waverly, while Ruth Gottschall shines as his foil, lodge manager Martha Watson. Her "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy" may we'll be worth the price of admission.
There's no better way to spend the holiday season than with familiar, nostalgic comfort. This WHITE CHRISTMAS delivers on the comfort, lacking only hot cocoa for the audience's total delight. Anyone who leaves without a familiar song or two going around in their head is likely a Grinch.
At the Playhouse through December 31. A must-see for the season.
Photo Credit: Joan Marcus
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