"It's A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play" Tells A Hopeful Christmas Story
By KATHERINE PARKER - Staff Writer for The Greenwood Commonwealth
“It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play,” Greenwood Little THEATRE’s latest production, invites viewers to open their Christmas season “with a real feel-good story.”
The show runs a little over an hour, in which time the audience takes in the trials of George Bailey, played by Lydia Jacobs-Stagner and J.T. Hurst.
After losing $8,000 from a bank run in the early 1930s, George wishes he had never been born. His guardian angel-in-training, Clarence, hears his wish, and grants it as a solution to show George just how important he is.
Jacobs-Stagner delivers a compelling performance as young George in the play’s flashback scenes. These scenes help the audience understand George’s influence in Bedford Falls, where the play is set.
Hurst carries the performance throughout the play, shifting from college hopeful to depressed businessman to grateful family man.
The play functions as a type of play within a play. The set — decorated with Christmas lights, garland, and featuring a tree with presents at stage right — is set up for a radio play.
This means the actors and actresses on stage are playing the parts of actors in a story to be aired over radio waves.
“It’s the playhouse of the air,” Jimmy Agnew, who plays the radio announcer, tells the audience before inviting their ears to enjoy a story “perfect for this or any other Christmas eve.”
What truly makes the show is the live sound effects, provided by Glenn Nail, who is also co-directing the play. Nail’s sound booth is set up to look like a radio sound booth. He uses keys, ice trays, a bag of rocks and boomwhackers (tubes that each produce a different musical note) to mimic the natural sounds of everyday life.
In what is otherwise a play of people delivering lines into a microphone, the sound effects bring life to the stage. They encourage the actors to lean into their parts and truly make the play a “radio play.”
Dezarae Leto, who is co-directing the play, said she wanted the show to offer viewers an escape into the hope of the Christmas season.
The radio play, though it isn’t that long, does that. A line delivered at the beginning of the play by Greg Dees, in the role of Peter Bailey, sums up the experience. “I feel that, in a small way, we are doing something important,” Dees says.
And if Leto’s goal was to infuse hope into the season, that goal has been accomplished.
Performances are set for Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for students, and may be reserved at www.greenwoodlittletheatre.com.