In Four Short Years, "A Christmas Story" has become a new triangle Christmas tradition.

Robert's Reviews - Dec. 2007

A Christmas Story Review

by Robert W. McDowell

In just four short years, the Cary Players and Applause! Youth Theatre of Cary's joint seasonal presentation of A CHRISTMAS STORY, which resumes Dec. 14-16 in the sprawling auditorium of the Old Cary Elementary School, has become a new Triangle Christmas tradition. What the community-theater and youth-theater performers lack in polish, they more than make up in passion -- much to the audience's delight.

Matt Schedler is charming as Ralph Parker, the show's narrator and the jovial adult version of young Ralphie (Trevor Phillips), who desperately wants a genuine Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, but cannot convince his parents (Dan Martschenko and Nika Lee) and his teacher Miss Shields (Noelle Barnard) that he won't put his eye out with one of the BBs. Trevor Phillips and Davis Benz, who plays Ralphie's insufferably whiny younger brother Randy, are cute. Alec Martschenko is appropriately menacing as neighborhood bully Scut Farkas.

Farkas and his two henchmen (Brady Trax and Emmett Williams) are a constant thorn in the side of Ralphie and his best friends, Flick (Jarred Green) and Schwartz (Jackson Poon). Steve Whetzel and Lindsay Simpkins add nice cameos as Red Ryder himself and Ester Jane, the class braniac who has a hopeless crush on Ralphie.

Director Debra Zumbach Grannan demonstrates a fine flair for comedy as she orchestrates the action, which includes scenes staged all around the Old Cary Elementary School's auditorium while rampaging packs of Bumpus hounds tear up and down the aisles. All in all, the 2007 Cary Players and Applause! Youth Theatre of Cary production of Philip Grecian's charming stage adaptation of Jean Shepherd, Leigh Brown, and Bob Clark's screenplay for the award-winning 1983 motion picture based on stories from Shepherd's 1960s short-story collections is a pleasant walk down Memory Lane in a small Midwestern town not so many decades ago.

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