‘MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET’ IS HEARTWARMING
It’s the holiday season. It’s also déjà vu all over again. Lance Arthur Smith’s “Miracle on 34th Street: A Musical Radio Play” is back after a three-year hiatus.
From 2016 to 2018, this very merry adaptation of the original 1947 Lux Radio broadcast was staged during the yuletide at San Diego Musical Theatre’s onetime Gaslamp Quarter space. Now it’s onstage at Avo Playhouse in Vista.
Anyone who saw and remembers the SDMT shows will feel right at home with this Moonlight Stage Productions presentation. The set and the costumes are virtually identical. Colleen Kollar Smith is back as director. The original music and lyrics by Jon Lorenz that are intermingled with familiar holiday carols are intact.
Now as before, the story of a department store Santa Claus who wins the heart of a little girl and converts droves of doubting grownups is staged as a live radio broadcast, circa the 1940s. That means standup microphones, flashing studiostyle applause signs, keyboard accompaniment and lo-fi sound effects (both from the busy Morgan Carberry) and actors who face the audience more than
they do each other. If you close your eyes, it indeed sounds like one of those oldtime radio shows your ancestors huddled around.
A cynic might snip that “Miracle on 34th Street” is a big fat free ad for Macy’s. Not only is the story largely set at the store’s flagship Herald Square location in New York City, but Macy’s is namedropped in song after song. Rival Gimbels get its share of air time, too, and the U.S. Postal Service is gloriously celebrated near the finale, as it figures in the plot twist that wins the day for Kris Kringle (Ralph Johnson, who played the role during the SDMT run).
But this is not the season for cynicism. If anything,
commercialism is decried in “Miracle,” in which faith and love and goodwill infuse both the storytelling and the music. Aside from Johnson’s likable Kris Kringle, Zane Camacho is a one-man troupe of kooky characters, from huffy R.H. Macy to pompous psychologist Granville Sawyer. He also plays the frustrated prosecutor destined for defeat in the case against the Man Who Would be Santa.
The show’s anchor is Jenna Lea Rosen, seen this past summer as Belle in Moonlight’s production of “Beauty and the Beast.” Her performance as store executive Doris Walker is a winning one from start to finish. She completely sells Walker’s
transformation from disbeliever to believer as well as the nervous romance with idealistic attorney Fred Gailey (Rudy Martinez). What’s more, the warm and lovely voice heard in the Moonlight Amphitheatre resonates again inside the Avo Playhouse, and Rosen’s a bright contributor to the between-story musical commercials the cast performs throughout the evening.
“Miracle on 34th Street: A Musical Radio Play” is Moonlight Stage Productions’ first ever holiday musical. Don’t be surprised in the least if it’s back a year from now.