EDMONDS — Sure to steal the show and hearts in the audience are the children and teens in “Miracle on 34th Street” — the current offering from Edmonds Driftwood Players.
The cast includes a delightful group of elfin kids, whose enthusiasm provides great Christmas cheer. They sing, they dance and they laugh. This crew could make anyone believe in Santa Claus.
And many of the adults in the play also are charming.
Eric Bischoff carries the show with his rendition of a polite, homeless old gentleman going by the name of Kris Kringle.
When a drunk Santa threatens to ruin Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day parade, Kringle volunteers to help out. He’s so great in the role that he’s soon the primary Santa at the chain’s main store in midtown Manhattan. When Kringle surprises customers and employees by claiming that he really is Santa Claus, it leads to a court case to determine his mental health and his authenticity.
Along the way, he becomes part of the lives of Macy employee and single mom Doris Walker (played by the talented Molly Hall) and her daughter Sarah (alternate performances by Abi Brittle and Isabelle Menning) as well as the Walkers’ next door neighbor, a young lawyer named Fred Gayley (the equally talented Jason Gingold) and Doris’s colleague at the department store, Ms. Shellhammer (Cynthia King.)
Other cast members include Justin Tinsley, Jane Lear, David Dugdale, Shelly Coley-Donohue, BriAnne Green, David Selvig, Will Patton, Jason Bradford, Emily Fogarty, Austin Olson, Randy Yamanaka, Sully Hart, Charlie Gingold, Quinn Bergau, Chloe Cook, Sadie Gingold, Eliana Harrick, Sully Hart, Alyssa Hertzog, Stephany Janssen, Sofia Nuno, Kate Olson, Kate Parrish, Bella Perritt and Mia Perritt.
The play, with its current setting, was adapted from the Valentine Davies novel by Mountain Community Theater, based on the 1947 20th Century Fox movie.
Driftwood producer Diane Jamieson and director Nikki Fey-Burgett obviously are working with a small budget.
The set is minimal, but also confusing, owing to a clumsily divided stage that doesn’t as much delineate the scenes as cause problems for the actors, some of whom could not project their voices from the very back of the stage. Perhaps by this weekend, this bug will be worked out.
Driftwood has a history of offering some of the very best community theater productions in the Puget Sound region. Going on 60 years, it’s one of the veteran performing arts organizations in Snohomish County.
However, the 2008 recession was tough on non-profit community arts groups, and it’s evident that Driftwood took a hit.
The cost just to maintain the group’s lovely Wade James Theatre building is huge, and volunteers can only do so much without money to build sets.
In the program, Edmonds Driftwood Players president Carissa Meisner-Smit urges patrons to enjoy live theater, but also to support it financially.
Driftwood deserves it.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
If you go
“Miracle on 34th Street”: Produced by Edmonds Driftwood Players through Dec. 21 at Wade James Theater, 950 Main St., Edmonds. For ticket and performance information, go to www.driftwoodplayers.com or call 425-774-9600. A special mailbox outside the theater is collecting letters to Santa.
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