Ralphie Parker’s back for a second December at the Sierra Madre Playhouse, still wishing and hoping to find a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle BB gun under the tree, still providing audiences of all with A Christmas Story sure to both touch the heart and tickle the funny bone.

Christian Lebano once again directs Richard Van Slyke’s Old Man, Andrea Stradling’s Mother, and Jackson Kendall’s Adult Ralphie with equal parts love, imagination, and care as playwright Philip Grecian affectionately recreates the 1983 MGM holiday movie perennial and characters made famous decades earlier by humorist Jean Shepherd, not just Ralphie (Sawyer Valin) but also his kid brother Randy (Bradley Bundlie), his best buddies Schwartz (Marshall Gluck) and Flick (Jude Gomez), girl classmates Helen (Kennedy Farr) and Esther Jane (Zoe Cox), and yellow-eyed bully Scut Farkas (Griffin Sanford).,

 Movie fans will smile in recognition as The Old Man rages about the family furnace, battles neighborhood hounds, and exults when informed he’s won a “major award” while Mother does her best to support her irascible spouse, give her boys maternal love and guidance, and get Randy to eat his meatloaf, even if it means doing it piggy-style.

Meanwhile at school, Miss Shields (Danon Dastugue) still does her best to control her rambunctious pupils, believes that “guilt is far worse than any punishment,” and insists on proper margins in the “themes” she assigns.

Grecian’s script (based on both Jean Shepherd, Leigh Brown, and Bob Clark’s screenplay and Shepherd’s novel In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash) manages to include virtually every one of the bits that have made A Christmas Story a holiday tradition—Flick’s tongue’s unfortunate triple-dog-dare-you encounter with a frozen flag pole, the night an accidentally foul-mothed Ralphie ended up with a bar of Lifebuoy for dinner, the “secret message” revealed by Ralphie’s Little Orphan Annie Decoder Pin, the “What I Want For Christmas” theme that Ralphie is certain will score an A+++, and a bunch of hilarious fantasy sequences showcasing Lebano’s directorial ingenuity.

 A Christmas Story 2018 wisely ages Ralphie down to, if not the movie’s eight years, at the very least a boy clearly in his preteens, and since the delightful Valin is as close a dead ringer for Peter Billingsly as any movie fan could wish for, the recasting is doubly felicitous.

 Kendall’s Adult Ralphie once again narrates with abundant charisma and charm in addition to stepping in when other adult characters are needed, most notably a Christmas tree salesman who’s no match for the Parkers in bargaining down a sticker price.

Stradling returns as the personification of maternal warmth, Van Slyke’s Old Man fumes as deliciously as ever, and both SoCal favorites give their characters their own hilarious quirks.

 Dastugue turns Miss Shields into a foghorn-voiced battleaxe with a soft spot for margins, then returns in Elf mode as the grumpiest and least loquacious of Santa’s helpers.

Bundlie charms as the weewee-prone Randy, played last year by Gluck, who’s back this year as Schwartz alongside fellow returnee Gomez, both of them as terrific as ever.

Cox is perfection as the hopelessly smitten, pretty-as-a-picture Esther Jane, Farr makes for a sweetheart of a Helen, and Sanford’s towering Scut is a bully you can’t help but like.

A Christmas Story once again looks sensational on Charles Erven’s cleverly designed two-story set, Emily Hopfauf and Esther Fuentes’s well-chosen period properties marred only by a newspaper and magazine written in invisible ink and an anachronistic coiled phone card.

 Shon LeBlanc costumes Ralphie et al to early-‘40s perfection, Derek Jones lights set, props, and costumes with subtlety and pizzazz, and Christopher Moscatiello’s sound design mixes amusing effects and some equally fun music choices.

Kudos too to original fight director Ken Merckx for Ralphie and Scud’s fisticuffs and to decorative painter Orlando de la Paz and his scenic painting team.

David Campbell, Karyn O’Bryant, Barry Schwam, Kirk Smith provide prerecorded voices.

A Christmas Story is produced by Owen Lewis and Lebano. Kelsey O’Keeffe is assistant director and production stage manager and Julian Moser is special assistant to the director. Elizabeth Eichler is stage manager and Mara Aguilar and Veronica Vasquez are assistant stage managers.

Audiences who fell in love with Sierra Madre Playhouse’s A Christmas Story last year will find even more to love in 2018, and those about to discover its many pleasures are in for a heartwarmingly nostalgic seasonal treat.

Note: All children’s roles are double-cast.

Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre.
www.sierramadreplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
December 19, 2018
Photos: John Dlugolecki.

Tags: Jean Shepherd, Los Angeles Theater Review, Sierra Madre Playhouse