Loose Leaf Notes

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on December 19, 2019.

Turned out, it was the best Christmas pageant ever, both for the characters in the June Bug Center’s recent play and for the audience watching.  A play within a play and a comedy of errors that ultimately embodied the spirit of Christmas, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was adapted from a 1972 novel by Barbara Robinson and directed by Tonya Hall of Haebo Productions.

The 20+ cast of children and adults told the story of how Grace Bradley (played by Hannah Hill) took on organizing the yearly Christmas pageant after the controlling Mrs. Armstrong (played by Cindy Tueller) broke her leg, and how Bradley dealt with the Herdman kids, an unruly band of misfits who only joined the church’s Sunday School for the free snacks but ended up with lead roles in the pageant’s recreation of the Christmas nativity story.

The Herdmans – Ralph, Imogene, Claude, Leroy, Ollie, and Gladys – were unruly kids that lied, stole, fought and cursed, and the actors playing them – Wubi Coldwater, Eva-Rose Sarver-Wolf, Rhys Bowman, Eve Freday, Loic Prudner and Daphne Hill – employed skillful physical acting to play their rough-housing roles convincingly. Including the Herdmans in the pageant turned the town up-side down, as evidenced by the overheard gossip on the behind-stage phone conversations.

The Herdmans didn’t know the Christmas story. They were interested in every detail and saw it with new eyes, while everyone else in the town seemed bored with the pageant. “You mean they tied him up and put him in a feedbox? Where was the Child Welfare?” asked Imogene Herdman when she heard that Jesus was born in barn and wrapped in swaddling clothing. It was revealed through dialogue that Child Welfare was always checking up on the Herdman family.

As Grace Bradley read the Christmas Story to the children, the Herdman kids laughed at what they thought were cheap presents that the Kings brought Jesus, oils and spices. They didn’t know what a shepherd or an inn was and thought Wise Men were teachers.

When Grace Bradley’s daughter Beth (played by Clementine Anderson) told her father (played by Eric Wolf) that the Herdmans were dirty and looked like the refugees that you see on the news, her father reminded her that Mary and Joseph were like refugees too, with no place to go.

The pageant rehearsals were a disaster because of the Herdmans. A fire broke out from Imogene smoking in the bathroom, and the children were not able to go through the whole play. Expectations were low, but on opening night, everyone came to the play to see what the Herdmans would do.

Following a music-filled scene on a candlelit empty stage, the pageant was presented in the second act and the play took a miraculous turn. The Herdman kids, as Shepherds and Kings, brought cooking oil and a ham from their welfare basket for the baby Jesus, and Imogene Herdman, as Mary, shed tears during the performance.

Everyone thought it would be the worst Christmas Pageant ever, but it was the best, after all. The Herdman kids were changed by the experience, and that changed the whole congregation.  Judging by the smiles, hugs and comments at the play’s conclusion – “hilarious,” “moving” and “pure Christmas magic” – some members of the audience were changed too. __________Colleen Redman