Lawrence Community Theatre revives favorite: ‘A Christmas Story’

Mary Doveton is looking forward to the giant leg lamp.

The leg is 5 1/2 feet tall, and Doveton, the managing director of the Lawrence Community Theatre, is hoping it will attract some attention, lure some audience members in and sell some tickets to the theater’s Christmas production.

“We were looking for something that was family friendly,” Doveton says of the Theater’s selection of “A Christmas Story.” “It has entertainment value for not only the kids.”

The play opened last week and runs through Dec. 14 at the theater, 1501 N.H. Director Charlie Goolsby, a Lawrence High School drama teacher, says audiences should be excited about the production.

“It’s a family show,” Goolsby says. “They are going to see the parts of the movie that they just love.”

The original movie “A Christmas Story,” which came out in 1983, has become an American holiday standard, with marathon showings often on the airwaves around Christmas.

The story tells the holiday story of Ralphie, a boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas, despite the constant admonishment: “You’ll shoot your eye out.”

Goolsby says audience members will experience famous scenes like the one when Ralphie gets his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole or when the turkey is stolen by dogs.

“Some of those are just laugh-out-loud funny,” Goolsby says.

Other parts of the production will feature scenes not-so-familiar to movie fans.

“We get to see the narrator of the show as an adult,” Goolsby says of Ralphie. “He’s a character that you can see and not just that you can hear.”

The movie was adapted into a play by Topeka resident Phil Grecian.

“It’s just going to be a great experience to see something that you’ve always loved but see it in a different way,” Goolsby says.

Because the production was adapted from screen, Goolsby says the cast list is larger than that of most shows.

“It’s maybe a larger cast than people will expect,” he says. “In the movie, people tend to just think of the family. But we have a Christmas tree salesman and other kids in Ralphie’s class, the teachers. So it’s a bigger cast than they expect.”

An interesting actor on the production’s cast list is Knute Pittenger, who plays Ralphie’s father.

“The script and the narrator call him the ‘old man’ all the way through,” Goolsby says. “He doesn’t call him ‘dad.’ Just ‘old man,’ because that’s how the narrator talks to him.”

One of Goolsby’s favorite scenes, though, is the one with the leg lamp, which the father wins and is delivered in a crate.

“It’s pretty similar to the one in the movie,” Goolsby says.

Besides the inflatable leg lamp that will tower over children in the audience, Goolsby says the theater has secured a regular-size lamp that will be used in the play.

“There’s a large blow up lamp that they are using for a yard decoration,” he says. “It’ll be used for advertising. People can see that around town as sort of a warm-up for the show.”

Thanks to the lamp and a talented cast list, Doveton expects a successful production.

“People coming to the show can expect to see all their favorite scenes,” she says. “It should just be a really good, fun, affectionate kind of wacky show that people will really enjoy.”