It's A Wonderful Life at Long Wharf. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
It's A(nother) Wonderful Life at Trinity Rep. Photo by Mark Turek.
Not only is It’s a Wonderful Life playing at Long Wharf Theatre, a different production based on the same Joe Landry live-radio-style adaptation has returned to Rhode Island’s Trinity Rep.
Long Wharf is hopeful that It’s a Wonderful Life will become an annual holiday tradition, a la A Christmas Carol at Hartford Stage. Or A Christmas Carol at the Shubert.
Trinity Rep not only has begun its It’s a Wonderful Life tradition, it’s already got an A Christmas Carol that’s been running for 35 winters, since the legendary Adrian Hall ran the place.
As parent who brought both my daughters to the Long Wharf rendition, I second the wise advice from today’s Boston Globe review by Steve Greenlee of the Trinity Rep production:
It’s a breezy way to acclimate children to grown-up theater and a lesson in how families used to consume entertainment—gathered together around the radio rather than off in separate corners of the house with a bunch of digital devices in our palms.
That’s not to say It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play is children’s entertainment. It’s not. Anyone thinking of bringing their kids to this production ought to screen the original movie for them first and get them up to speed on the story. Otherwise this play, which moves along briskly, will go right over young heads.
The Criterion Cinema in New Haven can help you out this weekend. The cinema has booked the Capra film of It’s a Wonderful Life as both its Insomnia Theater screening tonight (Sarturday, Dec. 17) at 11:30 p.m. and its “Movies and Mimosas” presentation at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 18.
And Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School did a production Thursday night!