“Review: LCT's 'Pageant' is sold out for good reason - Kentucky.com”

Review: LCT's 'Pageant' is sold out for good reason - Kentucky.com

Posted: 06 Dec 2009 07:14 AM PST

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By Candace Chaney Contributing Theater Critic

Each holiday season, Lexington Children's Theatre offers programming that connects audiences with deeper meanings of Christmas. Last year's A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas offered touching reminders of simpler times and the enduring value of family. The 2007 production of A Christmas Carol, with its visually haunting staging, emphasized the fleeting nature of time, and how we must make the most of our lives before ours runs out.

This year, LCT cut loose and celebrated the holiday season in chaotic style with a sold-out run of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Adapted from Barabara Robinson's book of the same name, the play is about one church's plight to put on its yearly Christmas pageant. With wise men wearing bathrobes, angels donning bed sheets, and the same kids playing the same roles year after year, the pageant is a standard affair until the Herdmans arrive on the scene.

Poor, shabbily clothed and entertainingly aggressive, the six Herdman kids are everyone's nightmare. Children fear them. Adults are wary of them. They steal, bully, curse and tell dirty jokes. They even smoke cigars.

Lured by the promise of free food, the Herdmans show up at Sunday school the day that roles are being assigned for a story they've never heard of: the Christmas story. Immediately, they commandeer the pageant by signing up for roles they comically don't understand. Imogene Herdman wants to get revenge on the innkeepers, Gladys thinks the angel of the Lord is some kind of comic book character with superpowers, and the whole brood hilariously questions the fundamental constructs of the familiar tale.

Hearing the Christmas story told Herdman-style is funny, yes, but it is also touching. Director Daniel Nation deserves praise for cultivating a satisfying balance of unkempt humor and heartfelt discovery. What's more, he wrangles a mammoth cast of talented young people made even larger by the fact that, except for the adult roles, the show is double-cast.

This is the kind of show directors, designers and actors can really have fun with, and that fun is contagious. That mirthful vibe of chaos and discovery, however, doesn't belie the troupe's usual technical and artistic merit. Jerome L. Wills' set design functions in seamless harmony with Tony Hardin's jewel-toned lighting. Wills pulls double duty as sound designer as well, with sound effects punctuating some hilarious moments, particularly the soundtrack to Gladys Herdman's approximation of how the angel of the Lord sounds when she arrives on the scene with a flourish.

Speaking of Gladys, Alicen Abler turns in a remarkably spirited and accomplished performance for one so young (we saw her last year in A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas), as do the other Herdman brood. Imogene's (Abby Tikhtman) poignant portrayal of Mary in the Christmas pageant, in which she burps the baby Jesus and views him tenderly, like a young mother views the miracle of any ordinary birth, connects the audience with the realistic, very human side of the Bible's Christmas tale.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is sold out through its regular run, which ends with a show at 2 p.m. Sunday. But shows for visiting schoolchildren are scheduled for 10 and 11:45 a.m. Monday; sometimes a few tickets are available then, so call ahead to the box office, (859) 254-4546, Ext. 247.

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