Summary Of Miracle On 34th Street: The Musical

It’s Christmas season. Yes. And I am not a Scrooge or a humbug. I DO give to charity. I do not wish to boil anyone in a Christmas pudding, nor stab anyone in the heart with a sprig of holly. And I am kind to my nephew.

MIRACLE--RIVERBANKThat preamble brings me to the Riverbank Theatre’s current production of Miracle on 34th Street: The Musical.

This play, based on the well-worn 1947 Christmas movie starring then-child actress Natalie Wood, screen beauty Maureen O’Hara as her mother and the wonderful Edmund Gwen as Kris Kringle. There was also a very able supporting cast–from John Payne as the neighbor/lawyer who defends Kringle in court to Gene Lockhart (who played Bob Cratchit in the 1938 A Christmas Carol) as the Judge, and a cantankerous worldly William Frawley (Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy) as the Judge’s political advisor. This musical was first produced in 1963 as Here’s Love, an effort no doubt to keep the audiences coming long after the Christmas trees were collected from the curb. I guess it worked as it ran until late spring.

This play was written, though, it seems with Willson facing a huge tax bill from the IRS over mis-reported income from The Music Man. Why else would Willson, who also wrote The Unsinkable Molly Brown, lower himself to grind out this dreck based on an already successful movie. True, there are many examples of this genre, like the new School of Rock on Broadway. But this show simply does not deliver, and never