Theatre in Review: A Christmas Memory (Irish Repertory Theatre)

	Alice Ripley, Silvano Spagnuolo, Ashley Robinson. Photo: Carol Rosegg

No theatre company likes to celebrate Christmas more than the Irish Rep, and, to the credit of one and all at this fine company, they don't repeat themselves. No hauling out of a certain Dickens war horse for them: Each season features a different holiday-themed entertainment. This year's offering, A Christmas Memory, would seem to have the most tenuous connection to the mission of celebrating Irish writers, but it does have an impeccable literary pedigree, being based on Truman Capote's brief memoir about his Alabama childhood.

For that matter, A Christmas Memory, the musical, has some highly intriguing names attached to it. The music is by Larry Grossman, who provided high-quality scores to such fascinating Broadway also-rans as Minnie's Boys, Goodtime Charley, A Doll's Life, and Grind. The lyrics are by Carol Hall, who, counterintuitively, contributed the tart and tangy words to the songs in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Together, they have come up with a number of lively and touching musical interludes that fill out the emotions in Capote's brief character sketch. In "Imagine a Morning," the adult Buddy (the Capote figure) conjures up the people of his youth, striking a note of unappeasable longing that will inform the entire play. "Alabama Fruitcake" is a ragtime-flavored toe-tapper that shows the young Buddy and Sook cooking up the holiday treats that they distribute to lucky recipients far and wide (including Jean Harlow and Franklin D. Roosevelt). "What's Next" is a potent declaration of dissatisfaction by the adult Buddy, who finds life in New York to be a series of glitzy distractions even as his publisher hounds him to finish his new book. "Nothing More Than Stars" is an affecting ballad for the young Buddy and his ineffectual cousin, Seabon, whose life has been derailed by poor health and (one suspects) a certain fecklessness.

And, in its best moments, Duane Poole's book goes a long way toward evoking this eccentric Eden, in which Buddy, more or less abandoned by his divorced parents, grows up in a house filled with odd, disappointed, loving adults. The book and score succeed at the central task of establishing the nurturing affection between Buddy, who, even at the age of nine, is clearly "different," and Sook, a simple, uneducated country woman whose oddball ways Buddy finds enchanting. Whether rooting around for pecans, happily presenting each other with identical Christmas presents (kites), or nervously approaching the local bootlegger (a sinister figure in a feathered hat named Haha Jones) for some whiskey for their fruitcakes, A Christmas Memory makes clear that Buddy is spending his childhood with the love of his life.

What prevents A Christmas Memory from being as cloyingly sweet as one of Sook's fruitcakes is its awareness that this relationship, no matter how enchanted, cannot be sustained, if Buddy is to reach some kind of maturity. This is a temporary paradise, suitable for the boy but with little to offer the man he will become. In order to grow up, he must undergo a break so devastating it will continue to haunt him decades later. This dilemma is laid out in the most powerful number, "You Don't Know It," sung by Jennie, sister of Sook and Seabon and the only functional adult in the household, whose millinery business keeps them all afloat. It is Jennie who asserts that Buddy needs the discipline of military school, a decision that will have profound consequences for the boy. As performed with both rage and a touch of rue by Nancy Hess, "You Don't Know It" is striking in its candor, revealing that Jennie is willing to become the family villain if doing so provides the chance for Buddy that neither she nor her siblings can give him. And, as A Christmas Memory makes clear, Jennie is both right and terribly, terribly wrong: Buddy needs a better set of adults, but military school will clearly bring nothing but misery to this fanciful, effeminate young boy.

A Christmas Memory also has a number of amusing moments that prefigure the characters' futures. Buddy's neighbor is Nelle Harper, a little hellion who occasionally knocks the boy around when not getting into trouble with him. There's a sweet moment when Buddy gives Nelle a notebook and pencil for Christmas, thus beginning the process that would end in the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. And when Sook and Buddy secretly polish off the remaining whiskey after the cakes are finished, we want to tell the boy to hold off, as he has no idea of the substance abuse problems that will dog him later in life.

At the same time, there's no getting around the fact that A Christmas Memory sometimes groans under the weight of turning Capote's whisper of a story into a full-length two-act musical. (This is not the first time that theatre artists have struggled to turn one of his charming, but insubstantial, prose pieces into drama -- see the play and musical versions of The Grass Harp and the many failed attempts at dramatizing Breakfast at Tiffany's.) The first act, for all its attractions, is devoted almost entirely to the making of fruitcakes, and the second act lags badly, especially with a lengthy and thoroughly unnecessary number titled "Buddy's Midnight Adventure." Buddy and Nelle, spying on Haha Jones, get a glimpse of how some of their neighbors behave under the influence of his home brew. Later, Buddy narrates a highly colored version of the episode in an epic-length, four-part patter song that is, quite simply, a mistake. Designed to show Buddy becoming a writer, it isn't clever enough, it recaps events we've already seen, and it makes impossible demands on any child actor, even one as distinctive and gifted as Silvano Spagnuolo.

If A Christmas Story is to have the afterlife it deserves, its creators should seriously think about removing a handful of extraneous numbers and cutting it into a one-act of 90 minutes or so. This would also allow room for the badly undeveloped subplot of the unhappy adult Buddy and his writer's block. And it would alleviate a second act that often seems to be searching far and wide for a suitable ending. (It would also help if Barry McNabb's choreography had more imagination than the basic cakewalk steps and vaudeville shimmies he supplies here.)

Still, under Charlotte Moore's direction, Spagnuolo is a striking performer -- he's like a little lightning rod, picking up all the stray emotions in the house and reflecting them back, comically distorted. Alice Ripley, with her work-weary posture and eyes aimed, slightly unfocused, on some distant shore, is a fine Sook, even if she seems to be forcing her singing here and there. Together, they build a convincingly private world that brooks no intruders. Ashley Robinson, his lips forming a smile that all too quickly curdles into disgust, is fine as the adult Buddy, watching the scenes of his youth with hungry intensity. Hess finds the decency in flinty, disapproving Jennie. Virginia Ann Woodruff is touching as Anna, the black maid who becomes a member of the family. Samuel Cohen is solid as Seabon, Haha, and the local postman, and Taylor Richardson is a convincing handful as Nelle.

As if paying homage to The Grass Harp, with its enormous tree, James Noone's set places a clapboard tree against a clapboard upstage wall, with Brian Nason's Crayola-tinted lighting providing splashes of color. At times, the effect is like at a child's drawing, a charming and appropriate conceit. David Toser's costumes draw some canny comparisons between Sook's baggy calico dresses and Jennie's highly tailored suits.

There's beauty in A Christmas Memory, but at the moment it's in need of pruning to reveal just how potent it can be. If all involved can provide it with a stronger focus, it might be well worth having the Irish Rep violate its own traditions and bring it back for an encore.--David Barbour