“A Black Family Christmas”. How Traditions Are Made.

 It’s interesting how traditions are made. I’m not talking Traditions” as in “Fiddler On The Roof”, No, I’m bringing it closer to home. In my family, which isn’t big by any stretch of the  imagination, one of my daughters chose to have the High Jewish holidays at her house and another would have Thanksgiving and Chanukah at hers. Easy greasy until the families expanded, but that’s for another time. 

The Black’s (yes,  that’s their name) of 1222OceanFront in Carlsbad, have a whole different story to tell, and tell it they do at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad through De. 24, 2023. It’s called “A Black Family Christmas”. Pun or no pun intended, it was originally written by Dea Hurston back in 202

Victor Morris andMilena (Sellers) Phillips

Now after two years and a theatre named for her, it has been updated with new faces, music and more input from some of the original cast members Milena (Sellers) Phillips with direction by Kandace Krystal. 

What’s different from the many White Christmases I’ve seen?  Well, for one the characters are black save for one adopted son Javier (Matthew Javier) who is white and gay... and whose boyfriend Brian (Jacob James) is gay, black and Jewish, that’s different. It doesn’t get any more inclusive than that. 

Oh, and the house is decorated (Reiko Huffman) with symbols that include Kwanza Candle in the kitchen and masks art work from different black artists. The interior of the house is beautifully crafted and warm and homey looking

All in all, the family included in Hurston’s play, as mentioned above, is pretty much seen through a black perspective. But the overall message is that family is family and with few exceptions this Black family has its up’s and downs, crisis and suspicions, secrets and confessions, love /hate relationships, misunderstandings as seen through the eyes of people of color.

The Black family has lived on 1222 Oceanfront before the price of houses went skyrocketing and is now worth millions. When Dorothy Milena (Sellers) Phillips and her late husband James bought the house at that address, even though they could barely afford it, they needed a way to come up with enough for a down payment. By that time the neighbors were bitching because a black family was moving in. and no one made it easy for the Black family.

With the help of their extended family the money came through and for close to thirty years Dorothy hosted the family Christmas two day gathering for the length of the loan.  Over the years, traditions were made and kept. 

The traditional foods were Italian because they could only afford pasta and the fixings. Dorothy’s famous lemon aide was a specialty for her now grown son, James, JR (Halin Moss). In fact, he looked forward to having some as he and his now wife Aada (Kiara Hudlin) were heading to Carlsbad from San Diego for the holidays. All he talked about was his lemon-aide and the special relationship he has with his mother. For Aadya, she couldn’t get Dorothy to recognize her if she stood on her head and whistled the blues. 

Lizzy (Portia Gregory a hoot and a howl) Dorothy’s sister comes to the dinner with her specialty and food and presents.  She’s also carrying the ashes of her late husband, June, kept in a good sized Santa doll large enough to stand alone on the fireplace mantel so he can be included. Gregory is a hoot and a howl as the know it all sister who introduces Dorothy to her co -worker Victor (Victor Morris, who also plays James Sr. when the play opens). 

Halin Moss and Kiara Hudlin

Both she and Victor work at the Post Office and Lizzy wants them to get together. Victor is no shrinking violet either. He’s a towering good looking ‘cowboy’ who adds a whole new dimension to the dynamics of the family. He also lives on an avocado ranch in Fallbrook. Morris gets the show’s funniest and best song, the yodel-filled “Cowboy Christmas,” where he re-enacts how he wooed Dorothy on a gondola at the Venetian resort in Las Vegas. 

The show is pack full of laughs, some heartbreak, growing up, reality fixes for all members and would be members of the Black family.

Matthew Javier, Milena (Sellers)Phillips and Halin Moss

 Phillips also has some pretty sensual moves when she remembers dancing with Victor on a Vegas trip. The fact that everyone could sing and the entire cast looked like they were fully involved makes for a truly magical evening. Look for it to become a holiday regular. 

It’s not every day that a new musical /comedy/drama is as ready for audiences as 1222 Oceanfront. With most original music (“Cascabelos”, “Christmas Morn”, “Merry Christmas to Me”, “Cowboy Christmas”) by co- creator Milena (Sellers) Phillips and of course the usual traditional Christmas music, (“Silent Night”, “Hark The Herald Angels Sing”) it has a real holiday feeling especially under the deft direction of Kandace Krystal.

Music Direction Korrie Yamaoka, Stage Manager: Rosalee Barrientos, Scenic Design Reiko Huffman, Costume Design Zoë Trautmann, Props Designer Aria Proctor, Lighting Design Mashun Tucker.

The show runs a bit over 2 hours of fun, singing just plain something new. Enjoy

See you at the theatre.

When: 2 p.m. Wednesdays. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays. 8 p.m. Fridays. 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays. 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Dec. 24th.

Where: New Village Arts, 2787 State St., Carlsbad

Tickets: Check with Theatre

Phone: (760) 433-3245

Photo: Daren Scott

Online: newvillagearts.org

Shout Out to Diversionary Theatre For Its Outstanding Production of Tennessee Williams “The Glass Menagerie”

There are some things that are absolute in Diversionary’s “The Glass Menagerie” as directed by Lisa Berger: Shana Wride is absolutely splendid as the tragic and manipulative Amanda Wingfield, the domineering, southern belle and matriarch of the Wingfield family. If there was ever a role cut out for an actor, this one is a perfect fit for her, trust me on this one. 

Tennessee Williams’ memory play “The Glass Menagerie” still resonates after all these years. It opened in Chicago in 1944 and subsequently moved to The Playhouse Theatre in New York in 1945. It went on to win the New York Drama Critics Awards.

Luke Harvey Jacobs, Shana Wride, Kirk Brown, Julia Belanova

It is told in flashback by young Tom Wingfield (Williams’ alter ego played subtly by Luke Harvey Jacobs)  after he returns home after abandoning his disabled sister. He recalls the family dynamics in a somewhat dreamy atmosphere created by Vida Huang and haunting music in the background by sound designer Remus Harrington. 

Breaking the fourth wall, he tells us that he would rather be any place than at his mother’s house. He longs for adventure, action and escape. He’s annoyed at her nagging, her interfering, her stories of past glories and her pettiness. 

Everything he does; drinking, writing and spending most of his off hours at the movies, a tale Amanda refuses to believe, pushes him closer to leaving. The one thing he can’t ignore is his affection for his sister, who like a delicate creature disappears into her own world of glass figures and figurines. So shy, is she, she can’t even attend typing classes for fear of having to talk to fellow students. 

Tom, like his father before him, cannot stand the confines of his small apartment, the restrictions of his job, and finally the oppressive personality of his domineering mother. (“The stage magician gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.")

The setting is the St. Louis apartment of Amanda Wingfield and her two adult children, Laura (Julia Belandova) and Tom. The time is 1937 and the country is in the middle of the depression. Tom works in a shoe factory (Williams sold shoes for a time) and Amanda sells magazine subscriptions from her home, much beneath her status as a genteel Southern belle when a young girl.  

Money is tight but hope springs eternal for Amanda, the faded yet once popular belle, as she glides around their apartment recalling her glory days as a teen growing up in the south. Her repeating and reliving her past encounters with her own ‘gentlemen callers fascinates Laura, who longs for a gentleman caller of her own, but it annoys the hell out of Tom.

Kirk Brown and Julia Belanova

Amanda doesn’t comprehend why none come to call on Laura, her emotionally fragile daughter whose noticeable shyness (in most productions a limp from early bout of Polio) has her cut off from reality and plunges her into a make believable world of a glass animal collection, her favorite being the unicorn a solitary and mysterious creature, much like Laura was to her mother.  

But the crux of the story revolves around ‘the gentleman caller’ Jim O’Conner (a wonderfully gifted Kirk Brown), set against this suffocating atmosphere in which both Laura and Tom struggle to fight off the overbearing oppression felt by them by Amanda. 

Amanda hounds Tom to find a suitable caller for Laura so she too may have the thrill of entertaining as she had done years ago and possibly as a means of supporting Laura after she dies. Amanda, however, fails to recognize that Laura’s frailties will throw her into a tailspin and set her back years, which in fact they do.  

When Tom’s ‘friend’ Jim finally does come for dinner, in Act II, Laura discovers that she knew him in high school and had a crush on him. Devastated, she refuses to join them in dinner. Amanda just doesn’t get it and forces Laura to spend some time with her gentleman. Jim is the only positive person in the household, he laughs, talks about his classes in public speaking and he’s appealing and when he  finally gets Laura to open up, she too, becomes slightly lively,

She shows him her glass collection pointing out her favorite, the unicorn. Unfortunately, in a clumsy dance attempt, they bump into the table it is sitting on and knocks off the horn. As nice as Jim is to Laura, he already has a girl and all hopes of his returning another time are faded for any further relationships for Laura. 

‘Menagerie’ was Williams’ first successful professional play and his most autobiographical. Laura or Rose, his sister, (as was her given name), who was thought to be mentally ill because of her instability, underwent a frontal lobotomy that just about sent her brother over the edge. Some even suggesting that it was the cause of his heavy drinking, or his being gay as suggested by Dramaturg Jesse Marchese.

With the exception of Laura’s (Julia Belanova) role in Act I Burger’s production hummed along without a catch. The emptiness of her character left one with the idea that she mightn’t have been on stage at all. Things do liven up in Act II though, when Laura comes out looking like a new person with a wig to cover her very short boyish haircut. But it was not to be her fate. Her fate is sealed.

Shana Wride and Luke Harvey Jacobs

The last words that Tom Wingfeld, speaks: “Blow out your candles, Laura, - and so goodbye.” is a heartbreaker for anyone with a heartbeat. 

Were there tears at the end of the production? You bet. This bitter sweet play is so relevant for this time of year when family relations, loneness and separation are at the fore of many family dynamics, it cannot be ignored. 

Kudos also to Leah Osterman, props, Katie Paulson, costumes, Bailie  Molsberry, stage manager, Eliza Vedar , sound designer/composer, especially  Dramaturg Jesse Marchese, and of course Diversionary Theatre for its splendid production. 

See you at the Theatre. 

 

Dates: Through Dec. 23rd

Organization: Diversionary Theatre

Phone: 619 220 0097

Production Type: Drama

Price: $20.00-$65.00

Where: 4545 Park Blvd.#101

Photo: Andrea Agosto