Last Saturday (Christmas week has been too busy for blogging!), Mer and I got to go to Actors’ Summit to see their production of Dylan Thomas‘ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. A Child’s Christmas in Wales is a dramatized version of a short story that Thomas wrote. The play uses much of the language of the story as an adult Thomas narrating the play, and then intersperses the narration with Thomas becoming a child in the action of the play. It is very effective. The actor playing Thomas was able to pull off both the adult Thomas and the child Thomas, largely by body language. It did not seem odd to see a full-grown man running around with his best friends and getting excited over gifts from relatives, because the actor was the child Thomas. Very well done.

The play is not deep, but it excels at creating the atmosphere of a simple yet warm Christmas in Wales. Seeing the perspective of Christmas from the child Thomas’ perspective is a perfect way to get into the mood of the Christmas season – childlike wonder, family stories, snow, relatives, food, family traditions, and more. Mixing the adult Thomas’ prose into the play adds lyrical beauty to the play. Every year, Actors’ Summit puts on a Christmas play, so I have seen four or five different Christmas plays, and this was by far my favorite. It was sentimental without being schmaltzy, and warm without being cheesy.