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Chatham Life & Style is a digital magazine based in central North Carolina. Since 2018, we have sought to amplify queer, neurodivergent, BIPOC, and women writers as they speak to and about our community through music & theatre reviews and events coverage. If you are interested in writing with us, please reach out.
★★ by Dustin K. Britt, managing editor
Irving Berlin's White Christmas
National Tour
Durham Performing Arts Center
DURHAM, NC
December 3 - 8, 2019
RATING: 2 out of 5 stars
For information and tickets, click HERE.
Tailor-made for the stage, the highly theatrical film White Christmas, based on the songs of Irving Berlin, should be an easy, lucrative 1-to-1 adaptation. It need not be contorted into a bad Berlin jukebox musical.
The national tour of White Christmas has no trouble packing in the patrons, as the built-in fan base is thrilled to see renditions of beloved quartet of would-be lovers, hear a few favorite quips, or rudely belt out a few Berlin standards. But if you want the film’s rapid-fire comedic banter, nuanced character development, or sparkling 1950s showstoppers, it’s time for Netflix and Nog.
The film’s stakes may be low and the musical numbers sometimes disconnected, but at least it’s entertaining. Aside from Carrie Robbins’s stunning period costumes and Musical Director Michael Horsley’s brass section (with local musicians coordinated by Wayne Leechford) this touring production is flat, lacking the dazzling sets and lights of a Big Broadway Show, which it purports to be. Long blackout scene transitions cause disruption and director Randy Skinner is always trying to push his actors into the next scene.
The bouncy “Snow,” gets a good staging punch-up from Skinner and the writers, with some added farcical shenanigans on the Vermont-bound train. A numbingly slow “Blue Skies” musical arrangement, though, leaves us limping, rather than exploding, into intermission.
The careless reordering and adding of random Berlin songs unglues the story, cause-and-effect falling victim the spread of musical numbers into the story’s music-light second half--a rookie jukebox musical fumble. Early in the original film our leading men, stalling to help their ladies fair escape, sang the “Sisters” duet in semi-drag. For the stage, the song’s Act II placement is justified as the characters’ compliance with “union rules.” Do what now?
You can move what you like--please do!--but it has to make sense. A meandering and pointless character, farmhand Ezekiel, seems to have wandered onstage from an entirely different show and we’re all just waiting for him to leave.
Luckily, Kerry Conte carries the mature Betty Haynes with old Hollywood grace, doing all of the emotional heavy lifting while would-be beau Bob Wallace suffers from David Elder’s lack of subtlety. Buoyant duo Jeremy Benton and Kelly Sheehan (as meet-cute couple Phil and Judy) are remarkable in the tap-heavy “I Love A Piano”, but the lifeless, repetitive choreography of “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing” makes them look amateurish. A casting stunt ends in a fiery crash as Lorna Luft nabs the show’s wildest and juiciest role--the brazen Martha Watson--and squawks every line into the wild blue yonder like Ruth Buzzi, but without regard for comedy, meaning, or punctuation.
The normally endearing and sympathetic General Henry Waverly (Conrad John Schuck) is stripped of dimension, replacing the film’s stern, but dryly funny charmer with a Pattonesque humbug--a leftover from Schuck’s 2006 turn as Daddy Warbucks. But book writers David Ives and Paul Blake are to blame for the General’s unearned, teary monologue, just before their rushed, unfulfilling conclusion.
The show is a cute one, with a handful of decent jokes and a couple of crackerjack musical numbers--often brand new material. An adaptation needn’t be identical to its source’s design--surprises and tweaks are the name of the game--but if the original’s success is what Sells The Product, you had better hug that blueprint pretty tightly. Originality is not an excuse for shoddy craftsmanship. You can’t remove a story’s perfectly sturdy beams and replace them with chewed-up bubble gum, no matter how sweet.
Dustin K. Britt (he/him), managing editor and arts writer, holds a Master of Arts in Education degree from East Carolina University and has worked as a theatre maker in the triangle for more than twenty years as a director, actor, stage manager, playwright, producer, and teacher. He specializes in student, community, and professional theatre, dance, and comedy as well as arts accessibility and queer politics. His writing has also appeared in Indy Week. Carolina Parent, Pedal Fuzz, and Triangle Arts & Entertainment. You can find Dustin on Facebook.
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