'It's A Wonderful Life' by American Blues Theater is warm tradition through and through
THEATER REVIEW: "It's a Wonderful Life: Live at the Biograph" ★★★½ Through Dec. 31 in the Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.; Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes; Tickets: $32-$40 at 773-871-3000 or www.victorygardens.org. With Kevin R. Kelly (George Bailey) and John Mohrlein (Mr. Potter and Clarence).
If you're headed to a show called “It's A Wonderful Life: Live at the Biograph,” a seasonal perennial in Sweet Home Chicago that concludes with the cast handing out milk and cookies, it's a pretty good bet you're invested in tradition, if not full-on childhood regression.
“Look out the window and see the snowflakes fall,” said Ed Kross (or, in the 1940s lingo he easily assumes as your genial studio host, Edward Kross III), at the start of Sunday afternoon's performance of the American Blues Theater production of the live, Golden Age of Radio-style version of the beloved 1946 cinematic Christmas classic.
Kross, a retro fellow even in mid-July, was cocking his head towards the huge and very real windows that occupy one wall of the Richard Christiansen Theater inside the historic Biograph — windows that looked like scant protection from a frigid urban landscape of genuine white stuff. Blowing.
Lincoln Avenue looked like Siberia. Or Pottersville. Or the inside of the collapsed Metrodome.
And with that, Kross gave a Frank Capra-esque swoop of his arm and a thick curtain slowly blacked out the cold, capitalist vista of Lakeview — though which all in the house had just painfully trudged — and allowed us to settle into our seats and retreat into the warm womb of Clarence and Zuzu, audiograms and Foley effects, carols and fake commercials, and the comforting grand illusion that one's own life actually means something in the great scheme of things.
American Blues Theater and the longtime director Marty Higginbotham have this show down cold — or, more aptly, down warm. I hadn't seen their richly detailed and exceedingly clever production since the American Theater Company ensemble walked out en masse and reformed under their previous name — a state of affairs that has led to two competing productions of “It's A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play” staged annually at two different theaters that are barely a mile or so apart. (I'll get back to that other one next year, assuming I've not got my wings by then.)
But the 2010 American Blues edition delivers all you could possibly want from this conceit. Kevin R. Kelly, a likeable but unsentimental George Bailey, really does seem to fall apart and then find himself that fateful night in Martini's bar. Gwendolyn Whiteside wholly captures Mary, that perfect small-town wife from a vanished era. And the inimitable John Morhlein milks every satanic gurgle from the evil Mr. Potter and then redeems himself moments later as Clarence.
Aside from the quality and sincerity of the acting, what makes this family-friendly show special is the sense of community it develops so quickly.
That's partly the material, of course. But as much as any theater company in town, American Blues is on a mission. There's no sense of the slick or the flippant or the pre-packaged — this is retail Chicago theater, where the actors are determined to move one heart at a time. They treat it as a moral imperative. And at one point Sunday, there were so many moist eyes in the house, the actors took to handing out hankies. Had they been offering time machines and real-estate listings for Bailey Park, Lost America, there would have been many takers. Better than going back outside.