Photo by Photo by Rory Dale
Nicole Renee Hale and Stephen Andrew Parker in "The Toymaker's Apprentice" at Circuit Playhouse.
The day before Halloween, I premiered my first holiday tirade while shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. The supermarket is already decked out for Christmas.
What’s the meaning of this!? Is there a sale on holiday hams? A national shortage of cranberry sauce for which we should stock up early? An eggnog glut!?
Photo by Photo by Rory Dale
Stephen Andrew Parker, Ron Gordon, and Nicole Renee Hale in "The Toymaker's Apprentice" at Circuit Playhouse.
No, just the usual flogging of the Christmas spirit for commercial gain. Bah, humbug already.
Though I’m now boycotting ANY grocery store that puts Santa ahead of the Mayflower (I’ll likely be eating my principles in a week or so), there’s one place a Scrooge-y theater critic cannot escape the holidays’ encroachment into ever-earlier months of the year, and that is on local stages.
Playhouse on the Square and Circuit Playhouse are already gearing up kids for the holidays nearly two months before Christmas, as if children need the prep time.
The first to open, on Halloween weekend at Circuit, was a kid’s show called “The Toymaker’s Apprentice.”
It’s a sweet little gift for parents of 3- to 7-year-olds; the gift being a run time of 40 minutes and a tale that parents haven’t heard a hundred times before.
It begins in the cozy little workshop of a master toymaker who needs a new apprentice. As a supplier of toys to Santa (even the North Pole is outsourcing nowadays!) old Gideon has plenty of work to do.
Two candidates show up to apply for the one position. The first is a pampered, bratty boy whose father is the town mayor. The other is a pig-tailed girl with a knack for making things. Gideon observes that it’s unusual for a girl to have mechanical prowess, which sets up the eventual positive gender message for young girls in the audience. He allows Jack and Libby to compete for the job.
Actor Stephen Andrew Parker, filling the stage with his physical antics and smarmy facial expressions, is equal comic goodness for kids and adults. And as Libby, Nicole Renee Hale endures Jack’s bullying with a stiff upper lip and a can-do attitude, though she’s hardly a pushover.
Featuring a variety of toys and slapstick fight scenes, the show doesn’t get too gooey with holiday cheer. Instead, it teaches children that hard work pays off with a good job. Wait, is this a Christmas show?
For years, Playhouse on the Square — the larger of the sister theaters — has tried to remain more secular with its “holiday” kid fare, doing shows such as “The Wizard of Oz,” “Peter Pan” and “Seussical.”
But this year the theater has staged the wintry musical “Narnia,” in which Peter, Lucy, Edmund and Susan, all played by child actors, tumble through the wardrobe and do battle with the evil White Witch.
I’d completely forgotten the scene in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” when Santa Claus rolls up and gives the children a bunch of weapons (so that’s what the elves are making these days!) with which to kill the bad guys. But there it was, in all its laughably incongruous glory. Santa, parceling out a sword, a bow and arrow set and a battle mace. True to the book. And yet, maybe something got lost in the yuletide translation.
It’s too bad Santa couldn’t have brought a better musical score, as the tunes that came with the show are a bit too zany for what some people might still revere as childhood’s first serious story next to the one they learned in church: a story of sacrifice and redemption.
“The Toymaker’s Apprentice”
The play is at 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 22 at Circuit Playhouse, 1705 Poplar Ave. Tickets are $25 adults, $20 students and seniors and $10 children. Call 726-4656.
“Narnia”
Shows are at 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 22 at Playhouse on the Square, 51 S. Cooper. Tickets are $25 adults, $20 students, $15 children. Call 726-4656.
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