It has become a recent tradition at Richardson Theatre Centre to stage something from the Radio Show Theatre genre. We are taken to a radio station, back in the days when actors and singers and musicians stood close to stationary microphones, performing like there was an audience. We get to know the personalities of all the characters, from the intern to the manager, to the host to the guitarist. We’re privy to the inside dope: crushes, spats, exhilaration, vanity, disappointment. Clearly all that work at the radio station comprise a family.
It’s Christmas Eve and everyone is wearing some kind of Holiday Finery. Even the technician. There are bright dresses, vivid sweaters, Santa caps, green and red ensembles. At WRTC they’re raring to go, infected by the spirit of the season. An ingenue is overcome with excitement: the one and only Elvis Presley will be performing there tonight. It’s something of a gamble. A lot of money has been spent to promote the event, in hopes of saving this humble station from destitution. Some of the performers are holding on to scripts, while others have one ear poised for their cues. Once the station signs on, there will be comedy skits (remember the Bickersons?) cooly cool tunes, traditional carols, perky commercials, and the emcee who (from what we can tell) has aspirations to the big time.
A Rockabilly Christmas is ingenious. This particular category of show appears more and more frequently during the Yuletide Season. Nothing Wrong with A Christmas Carol, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and A Christmas Story. But it’s great to find something different. Every Christmastime the RTC seats fill up, and Rockabilly Christmas was no exception. The audience was stoked, convivial and bubbly.
The hazard of Holiday Theatre is walking the tightrope between excess emotion and a story without zip. You could say they are informed by nostalgia, but there’s more to it. The manager has a monologue in which he cringes over the advent of television. Children and we grownups too, ache, for the lost enchantment of this rmiraculous event. We have the technology to create the razzle-dazzle, but it seems Christmas has lost its human touch. Forgive my getting so ooey-gooey but adults, especially (I think) yearn for the kind of Christmas that comforts and gladdens the soul. That wraps us in grace.
Thank you, Friends at Richardson Theatre Centre.
Richardson Theatre Centre presented: A Rockabilly Christmas. 518 West Arapaho Road, Suite 113, Richardson, Texas 75080. 972-699-1130