Encore Michigan

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Christmas comes to life with Phoenix Players

Review December 20, 2015 David Kiley

The Christmas season is chock-a-block with holiday plays and stories. Lots of Christmas Carols and derivative stories. Comedies, dramas and classics. So, why not a trip back to the 19th century, not to Dickensian London, but to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Minnesota.

The story of A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas, written by Laurie Brooks based on the classic stories, depicts the Ingalls family enduring their poorest winter ever. The crops have been devastated by locusts and the family is coping with the the death of baby Freddie. Charles Ingalls leads his family to Burr Oak, Iowa, to manage a hotel/saloon. The lonesome Mrs. Starr, missing her own grown daughters, offers to adopt Laura after she spends several weeks enjoying the young girls’s companionship. Laura believes her Mother will give her up. As Christmas morning approaches, Laura is faced with a decision: Choose what she believes is best for the family or stay with Pa, Ma, Mary and Carrie? This play tries to present the “missing” two years in the life of the Ingalls family—the only substantial period that Laura chose not to write about in her Little House books.

The Phoenix Players, a company making a transition from community to semi-professional, presents the play with some traditional Christmas carols sung by cast members, at the Green Oak Township Town Hall.

The set is simple, and works hard. We have the hotel living space of the Ingalls, Mrs. Starr’s sitting room, a stable with two horses depicted by a large paining.

The cast, directed by Anne C. Levy, delivers earnest, heartfelt performances. The community around Green Oak, which is near Brighton just off Rt. 23, will no doubt find it wholesome fare for the holiday, with no qualms about taking kids. The books–and TV series, Little House on the Prairie–are such a favorite of many that the story will be of interest to a lot of folks.

We tip out hats to Phoenix for its pluck in trying to move up its status among theater companies. It recently presented The Complete Works of Shakespeare–Abridged, a productions Levy directed in Ann Arbor with The Penny Seats.

As a company is trying to move up the ranks, it is risky to stage a production so heavily dependent on adolescent actors. The Phoenix Players manages to bring a seldom-produced, much loved story to an audience, and for that they should be commended.

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