Review: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE at Trinity Repertory Company

If you are at least 30 years old, and lived in the U.S. sometime in the mid-1970's through the 1980's you have very likely seen at least a snippet of the 1946 Frank Capra holiday film It's A Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. Sometime during the 1970's this film, along with another Christmas classic, A Miracle On 34th Street, lost full copyright protection and both films, to varying degrees, became part of the public domain. This made broadcasting and reproducing the films on tape very inexpensive. It's A Wonderful Life played (plays?) on a near-constant loop from Thanksgiving Day through New Year's Eve.

Based on Philip Van Doren Stern's short story The Greatest Gift (which is at least heavily influenced by, if not based, on Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol), It's A Wonderful Life has been adapted into "A Live Radio Play" by Joe Landry and this production is directed by Curt Columbus and Tyler Dobrowsky. The work can be described as A Christmas Carol meets Our Town meets A Prairie Home Companion. The adapted material is perfectly suited to community dinner theater, an art form of which I am a big fan.

The year is 1949, the play is set in a radio studio in New York City, The Players are introduced individually to the live studio audience (us) and as they emerge from backstage they amusingly greet each other as if they hadn't seen one another in years.

FrEd Sullivan, Jr. plays George Bailey, a man who feels like his life has been a failure, a waste. It is Christmas Eve, and George, who has sacrificed all of his hopes and dreams on behalf of others is now on the verge of financial ruin. George trudges through the snow to a bridge and contemplates a world without him in it.

Stephen Berenson plays the hapless angel Clarence, who after 200 years has yet to receive his wings. If Clarence can stop George from taking his own life and make him realize that he has made a positive difference in the lives of hundreds of people a bell will ring and George will get his wings.

Timothy Crowe plays Old Man Potter - the town Scrooge, along with Uncle Billy the good-hearted, co-founder of Bailey Building and Loan. As many of the scenes are between the two characters, Crowe does some interesting work to differentiate the two.

The ever-virtuous Mary (Hatch) Potter, George's wife, is played by Angela Brazil. Anne Scurria plays Violet Bick. They also play the Bailey children, with some terrific vocal characterizations.

The company breaks out of the "Radio Play" mode as Clarence leads George through the post-apocalyptic world that would exist if George Bailey had never been born. Each of the actors play multiple characters beyond the main characters listed above. From children to cab drivers, to the town drunk, scores of characters are played by these five players. There is also a sound effects man on stage opening and closing doors, ringing bells and making sounds of breaking glass.

The play easily keeps audience attention throughout its entire 85 minutes, which runs without intermission. While I am not a fan of cloying holiday sentimentality, I humbly defer to another film icon who said, "For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like".
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It's A Wonderful Life plays at Trinity Rep's Dowling Theater through January 2, 2010. Tickets start at $12 and can be purchased at the Box Office located at 201 Washington St. Providence, RI, by phone at (401) 351-4242; and online at www.trinityrep.com.

Photo: Stephen Berenson, Anne Scurria, Timothy Crowe, FrEd Sullivan Jr. and Angela Brazil in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play

Photo by Mark Turek, Courtesy of Trinity Repertory Company

 

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