Christmas Play

The two kids in the picture are my cousins Adam and Austin. They were Gramps and Donald Rainey in A Cricket County Christmas and they were a hoot.

I love going to the play because it's the closest thing to a dinner theater (albeit a far cry from it) I get to go to. Adam and Austin are great kids and I wish sometimes I saw them more often, but I try to go to Adam's football games and next year I'll hit Austin's cross country meets. I hit Isaiah's and Jonathan's basketball and soccer games. And Adam's football games. They were fantastic in the play and both are very funny. But if anyone has a true gift for it it would be Adam. He's very natural and understated. If it was something he wanted he could be the kind of actor who became a superstar.

Austin loved the crowd reaction and was quite funny, but he had a role where he could ham it up a bit. He would be Jim Carrey and Adam would be Daniel Craig. Two wildly different stars, but each one talented nonetheless.

Then you have Rebecca and Mary Jo. Rebecca played the older Mimi while Mary Jo was the Innkeeper who did a lot of the heavy lifting with Adam. They were wonderful to watch as well. And while Rebecca was good, Mary Jo was pitch perfect. If she wanted to be a serious actress she could. She got a little flumoxed at the end but she really nailed the straight woman role.

Everyone else was, well, like they should be. Kids having fun with parents coming to support them. If I were being harshly honest I would say this had nothing to do with the kids and everything to do with a certain adult's thwarted creative voice. Which led her to make some really big missteps in the service.

The re-enactment of Bing Crosby and David Bowie's duet. Even though the music was ok, the set up of the scene was just as forced and uncomfortable now as it was when the REAL people did it. And they did a reading which was all lamentation and death until about 20 seconds from the end when there was the bit that Linus nails much more effectively in Merry Christmas Charlie Brown. It was bad people. And when you lose my dad's interest then you have really missed the mark because he was handing out money to the girls who didn't miss they're lines, and folks all of my cousins got five dollars and in total he spent 40 dollars on them and they'd already gotten a 20 dollar gift cards from my aunt.

 

But for my money truly the cutest kid all night was my 5 year nephew as the Little Drummer Boy. Jonathan had no lines and his ears were sticking out like cab doors with the bandana he was dressed in but he was truly adorable and worth the bad pasta and overpriced cake and the looooong goodbye that put me home at 10PM instead of 9 but I had a good time and it got me out of the house.

So if you have any relatives that are children in a Christmas Play whether it's at a church or a school or maybe even the Great White Way, go pay the price of admission and enjoy the evening with friends and family. I know I get nit picky but it doesn't mean I can't appreciate the effort they put into it. Besides. These are trained thespians, but kids having a good time.