PLEASANT GROVE — In the basement of the Pleasant Grove Public Library resides a cute and noble community theater called the Pleasant Grove Players. Their latest offering is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, a classic holiday play by Barbara Robinson that has been delighting audiences since 1982. Adapted by the author from the 1972 book, the comedy explores themes of acceptance, kindness, and what it truly means to be a Christian through the lens of a small-town holiday pageant.
Directed by Howard and Kathryn Little, the play, (set in an unknown small town), addresses how a snotty church group would react if the towns’ poorest, dirtiest, most destructive family, (the Herdmans) suddenly look over their Christmas pageant. The cast’s plum delivery of the whip-smart script had the audience laughing scene after scene as supposedly charitable Christians manifested some very un-Christian feelings towards one another.
The director of this show-within-a-show is Grace Bradley, played by Brenna Brown. Brown effectively conveyed the frazzled mind state of a woman caught between a rock and a hard place. Should she accept the Herdmans as a good Christian, or give into peer pressure and cancel the pageant? Her daughter Beth, played by Mckinley Brinkerhoff, effectively and entertainingly narrated the show, keeping the play moving from scene to scene. Her brother Charlie, played by Andrew Laudie, was the chief family hypocrite, and felt justified hating the Herdmans because they bullied him at school. Laudie was excellent at demonstrating his character’s self-righteousness through his line delivery and physical performance.
Antagonists the Herdmans consist of six children and zero adults. Their father abandoned the family years ago (“hopped on a train and never came back”), and the children have more interaction with social workers than their absent mother. Originally unfamiliar with the Christmas story, once cast in the pageant, the kids decide King Herod must be punished for his crimes and rename the new take on the Christ story as “Revenge at Bethlehem.”
Each Herdman has their vice. Leroy, played by Chris Salazar, steals the Twinkies from Charlie’s school lunches. Camilla Mendez as eldest Imogene threatens kids with torture if they don’t let her be Mary in the pageant. And Gladys, the youngest, played by Ruby Jardine, is convinced the Angel of the Lord is a comic book superhero.
In a supporting role, Tanika Larsen plays Mrs. Armstrong, the original director of the pageant who drops out due to a broken leg. Larsen’s scenes, in which Armstrong lectures and reacts to each pageant catastrophe, were entertaining, and her Midwest accent was fabulous.
The play isn’t all comedy. In a dramatic turn towards its end, Beth declares in exasperation that the Herdmans playing Mary and Joseph looked like refugees; and the family realizes the OG scripture heroes actually were refugees—likely tired, dirty and poor from traveling.
Costume design by Tina Fontana effectively conveyed characters, especially Imogen, who emerges as the heart of the show. Her jeans were held together with safety pins, she wore a creatively ripped purple sweatshirt, and her hot pink reflective sneakers peaked out perfectly under her robe as Mary. The character also wore giant dangle Christmas tree earrings, which other characters react negatively towards because Mary, Mother of Jesus, wore no such things.
The stage, designed by Madison and Tina Fontana, contained a mural of the Bethlehem star and several crosses and stereotypical Jesus drawings that would be at home in a small town church. A platform on stage left with a pair of 1970s chairs served as the Bradley’s living room. Stage right held a three-step riser stage used as a choir riser for the children’ s numbers as well as a make-shift hospital bed for Mrs. Anderson’s scenes
This play is challenging to stage since it includes dozens of children parts and they speak a large amount of the lines (the director’s note specifically thanks the production’s “child wranglers”). It was difficult, at times, to understand what was going on in larger scenes with the children when they involved a lot of verbal insults and physical action. But everyone in the cast and crew deserves credit for effectively staging a show with so many laughs and so much heart.
Running 56 minutes without intermission, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a humorous and poignant look at some of the holiday season’s most important messages, and shows us that kindness and acceptance are more important than perfection.
