Clarence blinks a lot George’s wife, Mary, has clasped hands and a high, demure speaking tone an impoverished drunk has a crooked back and twisted face, like a melodrama archetype and so on. After a jaded magazine writer (Emmy® winner Matthew Rhys, 2018 Best Actor. Wearing the same brown suit throughout, Lott channels George, Clarence and a host of other personalities, using shifts in voice and body language as distinguishing markers. Tom Hanks portrays Mister Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a timely story of kindness triumphing over cynicism, based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. Rescuing him from this fate is Clarence, a homespun angel who doesn’t have wings but is hoping to earn them soon, gosh darn it! After George’s dimwitted uncle misplaces a wad of cash, the institution faces ruin, and George contemplates suicide. Robbins supplies the spare, suggestive set: a bench and a few dangling lanterns and old-fashioned signs - including a sign for the Bailey family’s savings and loan business. Certainly Lott, in his performer capacity, and director Gregg Henry have, within the limits of the material, given the piece a respectable launch at the John Swayze Theatre in Fairfax.īrooke A. Given the film’s popularity and the theater field’s unflagging appetite for holiday programming and small-cast shows, “Wonderful Life” could well have an active future on stages around the country. Aware of the story’s timely themes - who is George Bailey but an Occupy Bedford Falls organizer waiting to happen? - Lott and Hub artistic director Helen Pafumi have co-adapted the movie, generating a 70-minute entertainment that presses all the requisite syrupy buttons. Admittedly, you would hardly expect more from an adaptation of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a film that famously starred Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a self-sacrificing family man who learns, one Christmas, that he has unwittingly blessed the lives of those around him.
Unfortunately, after that inkling of nuance - that invitation to explore complex emotion and maybe a little valuable ambivalence - this world premiere slides back into its simplistic, feel-good groove. You can’t help but empathize with the guy. His body hovers in a stiff, half-straightened position, fighting against gravity and age.
Potter, a polio victim, struggles to stand up, and for a moment, it’s unclear if he’ll succeed. We learn that a ruthless banker has been menacing that wholesomeness - yes, indeedy! And then, fleetingly and surprisingly, this offering from the Hub Theatre humanizes the banker. Actor Jason Lott has been trotting out sketches of the film’s characters, conjuring up a portrait of good-hearted wholesomeness in the town of Bedford Falls. There’s a moment in “Wonderful Life,” a workmanlike new one-man show based on the 1946 Frank Capra movie, when realism threatens to break through the fog of schmaltz.