Upon clawing through the campy scores and sugarplum-kissed lines of many a holiday work, more often than not there’s a telling nugget that packages the show’s aura into a single, clean maxim.
Be it the opening sputter, or a particularly cogent song lyric — most works contain a line that puts a bow on the mood and neatly gift wraps the takeaway in reindeer-covered paper.
The Grinch: “Christmas, perhaps, means a bit more.”
The Christmas Carol: “God bless us, every one.”
It’s A Wonderful Life: “What is it you want, Mary?”
And for those a bit more myopic, “Let it go.” If that confuses you, chances are it may be time to step out from beneath the monolith you call home.
No claw-file is needed in The Aurora Fox Arts Center’s production of “Red Ranger Came Calling,” however, as the show’s fortune cookie-ready line came more in the form of a gift-wrapped, revelatory anvil than any sort of cryptic glyph needing to be teased out of the dialogical fray.
“This is something new.”
Skipping backward, dripping in tweed and frantically jazz-handing, “Red Ranger’s” entire company aptly sums up everything the show means for holiday theater with those four words during, and also the title of, the musical’s penultimate number.
And Da-hoo Doh-ray to that. A change of onstage scenery and pace during November and December is as welcome as the sight of an overflowing stocking is to a tot on Christmas morning, and the one provided by “Red Ranger” is cause for sending everyone at the Fox a personalized thank you card and taking each and every cast member out for a goblet of eggnog. Yes, a goblet; because they make everything taste better.
Just about every aspect of “Red Ranger” is quirky, unique and, yes, new. Maybe it’s the juvenile protagonist, setting on a rural island, sharp prose or just abundance of tweed, but there is an unexpectedly striking similarity between the goofy cadence and endearing personality of RRCC and Wes Anderson’s indie-film circuit darling, “Moonrise Kingdom.” And, Jiminy Cricket, it’s awesome.
Billed as “a guaranteed true Christmas story,” the show is a depiction of Berkley Breathed’s 1994 children’s book of the same name, which is a fanciful, alternative Christmas tale based on Breathed’s father. Set in 1939, “when dreams were unaffordable,” according to the show, the narrative follows Mr. Breathed – a no-nonsense ginger appropriately named Red – on his holiday quest for his dream gift: a Buck Tweed, two-speed, crime-stopper, star-hopper bicycle. A delightfully melodic moniker that tells Ralphie’s Red Rider BB gun to go stick its tongue to a pole. Red’s hell-bent journey involves animating the local curmudgeon, a certain Saunder Clos (really a poor witness protection name for St. Nick) to work his magic for one more Christmas. The nagging kid/coal-hearted dotard dynamic definitely has a Russell/Mr. Fredrickson vibe, just replacing the floating house with, like, Christmas spirit. A real-life bike stuck in a real-life tree on the real-life Washington island of Vashon (see: New Penzance) acted as the impetus for this fanciful, magical realist piece of whimsy, which adds to the lovability of the play and necessitates a tip of the cap to Breathed’s imagination. Seriously, google “bike in tree” and wrap your mind around the fact that that is what Breathed used as inspiration to spawn this whole story. He must be so good at Pictionary.
It’s a whacky, zany premise that is admittedly out there and could have easily just elicited a load of “huh?” But the Fox employs just enough narrative tie-ins, Band-Aids and dottings of solid stagecraft to ensure that never quite occurs. The most notable aspect of the entire production is the narrative perspective. The story was adapted for the stage by Myra Platt and Edd Key of the Book-It Repertory Company in Seattle using the duo’s notable Book-it style, which is a break-neck and refreshing way to take in a stage show. Cleverly woven, book-it style results in each character relaying happenings to the audience from his/her first person view, each one essentially acting as a momentary narrator. The result is snappy pace delivered from an amalgam of first and third-person pepperings that pick up and drop off at every other prepositional phrase. Those Wimbledon-style dialogues, with eyes darting to-and-fro, are the exact donkey kick to the metronome a holiday musical needs amid all the zombie-like stagnation and repetition out there. Going for Book-it was an ambitious leap for director Charles Packard, but it seems to have had a sleigh-sized pay off – one that would make Wes-Anderson’s gold-filtered heart flutter with pride.
Inside the narrative, Aidan Flaugh stands tall as a young Red, zipping off marble-mouthed lines with an adept combination of speed and patience. Musically, his very-much boyish croon wreaked of innocence, which was appropriate for the role, but certainly didn’t blow any of the doors off of Santa’s figurative workshop. A few more years of honing and toning (something Flaugh is certainly doing having already landed stand-out roles in local productions of “Oliver,” “The Sound of Music” and “Les Miserables”) and maybe an octave change, and this fair-haired spitfire is going to be a force.
Behind the leading Flaugh, Gina Schuh-Turner embodies a deftly capable Aunt Vy, Red’s primary caretaker. While the first act’s “Old Saunder Clos” is by far the show’s bounciest and most infectious tune, Schuh-Turner provides the most impressive vocal performance during “What Do You Do With A Dream,” which she singly tackles with both grace and gusto. Robert Michael Sanders also spins a splendidly acerbic Saunder, but as a show founded in youth, supporting kids Mackenzie Carmody, Mattie Carmody, Adelynn Eloe, Katie Phipps and Caitlyn Flaugh (Aidan’s sister) are heart-meltingly entertaining as discarded toys. Really, any human under five feet tall in a penguin, raggedy Ann, or toy solider costume is guaranteed to be adorable.
But amid a careening narrative, oodles of holiday cheer and a somewhat puzzling, fever-dreamish sequence in the second act, the show can hang its stocking, velveteen hat, mistletoe – whatever – on its deliciously smooth prose and abruptly poetic lines. The writing stole the scene more than once, with a sackful of slick similes, two of the more beguiling being, “floated toward the ceiling like a leaky balloon” and “like ghosts from a baby’s bad dream.” The opening monologue as rattled off by Jack Wefso too contains some punchy zingers, the description of Red’s “ostrich egg head” and a dig at his gingerness being definitively chuckle-worthy – as are most slights at those (un)fortunate enough to sport flaming locks. Sorry Alfred E. Newman.
Though a bit scatterbrained at times, all in all, “Red Ranger” delivers a refreshing respite from Jake Marley and his obnoxious chains. And even if you’re not into the whole alternative narrative structure and can’t bite onto the whole space nazi shootout – which is certainly an aggressive way to start the second act – just remember that RRCC is, at the very least, something new. And something new during this time of the year is something great.
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The Aurora Fox presents RED RANGER CAME CALLING – A Guaranteed True Christmas Story by Berkeley Breathed through Dec. 21. Friday and Saturday curtains at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Tickets start at $28, $14 for children under 12. Call 303‐739‐1970 or visit www.AuroraFox.org to make reservations. The Aurora Fox is at 9900 E. Colfax Ave.