Daily Newsletters
Account
Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Reading Railroad Theater to host Holiday Program Dec. 8, 15
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
FAIRFIELD – The newly formed Reading Railroad Theater will present its second production of the year when it hosts its 2024 Holiday Program on two Sundays in a row, Dec. 8 and 15.
The event will begin at 2 p.m. each of those days at Morning Star Studio, on the east side of the Fairfield square at 51 ½ S. Court St. The production will include Norman Corwin’s radio play “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas,” a dance-theater piece called “The Peace Play,” a choral version of the poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” caroling, along with apple cider and Christmas cookies.
Tickets will be on a pay-what-you-can basis, with a minimum of $10 for adults, $7 for children and can be paid for in advance through Venmo. Cash and Venmo will be accepted at the door.
The event is being produced by Richard Morell, who created the Reading Railroad Theater troupe this fall with its inaugural dessert theater staged reading of the play “Pygmalion.” Morell said the money he raised from that production defrayed the cost of shooting his short film called “Romance Cleanup in Aisle 5,” which he is filming inside Everybody’s Whole Foods. Morell said he raised enough money for the filming, and now he’s fundraising to pay for post-production.
“What I’d like to do with Reading Railroad Theater is to create a board and nonprofit out of it, come up with a mission statement and seek grants to make this into a venue to put on plays,” Morell said. “I’d like to do something once a month or maybe six times a year.”
Doug Marshall is directing the radio play, originally broadcast on CBS Radio on Christmas Day of 1938. Marshall said the play, which lasts about 40 minutes, was so successful that CBS gave its author Norman Corwin carte blanche to create whatever he wanted for the next 30 years.
The idea behind “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas” is that history’s worst villains attempt to put an end to Christmas from their home in Hell. Without giving away any spoilers, Marshall said the play shows the nice effect Christmas can have on people. Morell said it feels like a precursor to Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” except that in this play, there’s a community full of Grinches.
“The whole play is done in verse,” Marshall said. “That was the theme of [Corwin’s] radio program ‘Words Without Music.’ He was so witty to come up with so many rhymes, and they made you think. He was really a genius in that respect.”
Performing in “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas” are Doug Marshall as Santa, James Perryman as Haman, Tristan Montgomery as Ivan the Terrible, Andrew Mackenzie as the Devil, Eileen Gosvig as Lucretia Borgia, David Patterson as Nero, Patrick Towne as Caligula, Meredith Siemsen as a Demon, with narrators Gretchen Jentz and Alaris Todar. John Grunwald will provide live sound effects.
The dance-theater piece, “The Peace Play,” was created by Gretchen Jentz, and will be directed by two sisters, 11-year-old Bixie and 9-year-old Sloane Brower.
The poem the group will perform, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, will be the one Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians popularized in the 1950s.
“Anybody who grew up in that time will remember it,” Marshall said. “I first heard it when I was 10 years old, and I fell in love with it.”
Marshall said he hopes to see lots of families at these performances, where they can enjoy an afternoon of plays, music and dance.
“We’re hoping this will become an annual event that we can do every holiday season,” Marshall said.
Morell added that he’s hoping to put together shows in each of the next two months. He’d like to revive the September production of Pygmalion, because it was competing with the harvest festival back then, and he’s going to speak to the cast to see if they can reprise their roles for a performance in January. After that, he’s planning to produce the play “La Ronde” by Arthur Schnitzler sometime in February.
