 |
| Cast of The Flight Before Xmas |
The Flight Before Xmas
Seattle Public Theater
Through December 24, 2017
A sweet, family-friendly new Christmas-time play is
performing at Seattle Public Theater, penned by versatile local playwright Maggie Lee. SPT has retired it’s
perennial Best Christmas Pageant, and
is trying this new show. The Flight
Before Xmas brings disparate humans into contact with each other as they
all wait for a flight that must be delayed by weather.
It’s a nightmare that can bring out either the worst in
people or the best. In this case, it’s a little of both. It’s a situation we
can all identify with: the sinking feeling of being out of control of events
while wishing desperately to get to the next thing.
It’s Christmas Eve at SeaTac Airport and we meet a family
headed to Hawaii, all in matching shirts, a businesswoman trying to make an
important meeting, a young couple of Lesbians, two sets of kids traveling
between family households in their now-obligatory need to share visitation, a
complaining older woman, a single man, and an airport airline employee who
tries hard to provide great customer service.
The interactions are fun to watch and Lee throws in a bit of
magic theatricality. To while away the time, the man tells stories of various
lands and their Christmas rituals, at which point the entire cast stops and
turns into supporting players for those stories. When Douglas (Manuel Cawaling), a world traveler,
describes that Japanese celebrate with buckets of KFC, suddenly everyone starts
passing out drumsticks and dancing around.
Two of Ben (Tadd
Morgan) and Nicole (Jenn Ruzumna)’s
three daughters, Eleanor (Elora Coble)
and Gemma (Nava Ruthfield), are
happy to go to Hawaii. But Lizzie (Lydia
Hayes) is pouting and thinks Christmas in Hawaii is completely wrong. Morgan
and Ruzumna make a good-parent team trying to keep their kids patient and
demonstrating how they listen well, too.
When Gemma accidentally lets young Harrison’s (Hersh Powers) cat out of the carrier
into the airport, Harrison’s big sister, Maya (Kaiya Crothall) and the other pair of shuttling kids, Owen (Diego Cruz) and Frances (Lauren Hwang) pitch in to try to find
it. Their budding friendship is a nice support to see.
Margo (Kiki Abba,
with some of the best sardonic laugh lines), a kid-unfriendly businesswoman,
worries about missing a huge interview. Rosemary (Deniece Bleha, as a very cranky grandma) is one of the least
effective characters, but since she’s about the only one who displays a
significantly different attitude, one can see why Lee included her.
Young college-age girlfriends, Laurel (Marisol Gonzalez) and Amanda (Tessa
Weinland), are traveling to meet Laurel’s parents who do not yet know of
Laurel’s real interests in sexual partners and who are portrayed as very
conservative. Amanda gets a chance to learn to let Laurel come out to her
parents in her own time.
As Penny the airline employee, Skye Stephenson has a lovely manner, while clearly trying to master
her own disappointments in the delay. She’d be at home at any airline counter
in the U.S.!
As with most Christmas kid-friendly fare, there are little
bits of learning about how to behave better and get along with each other. Pretty
much every circumstance is relatable, and of course, at the end, everyone has a
dose of Good Cheer as the plane finally boards.
No comments:
Post a Comment
This is a moderated comment section. Any comment can be deleted if the moderator feels that basic civility standards are not being met. Disagreements, however, if respectfully stated, are certainly welcome. Just keep the discussion intelligent and relatively kind.