This year, though, Stage West is giving us something different. It isn’t necessarily in the form of their show, Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings, a bitter farce about an English holiday reunion for a family full of drunks, sexually repressed cases, and old people living out second childhoods. No, it’s the fact that the play is running in the troupe’s new (read: old) venue at 821 W. Vickery St. Some of this process has already been written about in our pages (see Kultur, Oct. 17), but now we the public can get our first look at the refurbished space that will serve as this hardy company’s home.
An interesting companion piece to this play might be Artisan Center Theater’s Meet Me in St. Louis, based on the 1944 musical film starring Judy Garland. That story isn’t about a Christmas reunion but rather a family trying to stay where it is in St. Louis, in the face of the father’s decision to relocate to New York. The domestic issues here are pretty strong stuff underneath the nostalgic trappings, and the songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane hold up very well.
Season’s Greetings runs Nov 23-Dec 31 at 821 W Vickery St, FW. Tickets are $20-24. Call 817-784-9378.
Meet Me in St. Louis runs Nov 23-Dec 22 at Belaire Theatre, 420 E Pipeline Rd, Hurst. Tickets are $6-13. Call 817-284-1200.
