A Christmas Story, The Musical is all about nostalgia

The Theatre Aquarius family holiday show is big and ambitious but also focused on the heart and magic of the yuletide season.

If there was any question that nostalgia for simpler times is high right now, A Christmas Story, The Musical at Theatre Aquarius opening next month answers the debate.

The two-week run is already more than 75 per cent sold and an extra matinee has been added.

But the nostalgia of this production, directed by Aquarius artistic director Mary Francis Moore, is complicated.

The musical is based on the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, which itself was based on a 1966 book called In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd, an American writer, humorist, and radio and TV personality. He co-wrote the film A Christmas Story, which is set around 1940 and comes from his semi-autobiographical stories.

So to sum it all up, we’ve got a musical in 2024 based on a 41-year-old movie taken from a 58-year-old book that is nostalgic for a time well over three-quarters of a century ago.

Got it?

The musical premiered in Kansas City in 2009 and opened on Broadway in November 2012.

In 2013, it received three Tony Award nominations for best musical, best book of a musical and best original score, two Outer Critics Circle Award nominations and six Drama Desk Award nominations.  

The story takes place in Indiana and focuses on a child named Ralphie Parker, who wants a Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas and will do anything to convince the adults in his life that he won’t shoot his eye out. There are bullies, childish dares, family dysfunction, accidental swearing, a doomed leg lamp, a disastrous visit to Santa, and plenty of laughs.

In the film, it’s all told by Shepherd, who provides the film's narration from the perspective of an adult Ralphie. At Aquarius, veteran actor and playwright Mark Crawford takes on the role of narrator.

With a cast of 33 and huge set and costume demands, A Christmas Story, The Musical is among the largest shows Theatre Aquarius has ever put on.

“I really wanted something large-scale as a holiday musical,” says Moore. “It’s the first time since the pandemic that we’ve been able to do this. I mean, Pollyanna was big, but this is bigger.”

Moore had never seen the movie before the children’s cast gathered for a screening at The Westdale in October. Initially mostly ignored, the movie – partially shot in St. Catharines and Toronto – is now considered a classic.

“I had just never seen it. But when I read and listened to a lot of holiday shows, I realized I had this one on repeat. I just kept coming back to it. The music is just so great and I think nostalgia is really comforting for audiences right now.”

Hamilton’s Finn Kirk takes on the role of Ralphie.

His co-stars and director have high praise for his professionalism and instincts. Kirk was in the ensemble and had an understudy role in last year’s holiday show Pollyanna, his first time on stage.

“Finn is very talented and hard-working,” says Moore. “He came into our first rehearsal completely off book and he’s just very dialled in all the time. He is constantly watching what is happening around him and adjusting what he is doing.”

The show has plenty of Hamilton connections beyond Finn Kirk, including musical director Patrick Bowman, set and costume director Brandon Kleiman, ensemble member and new Hamiltonian Nick Sheculski,and Moore herself, who moved to the city last year.

A Christmas Story also stars Dharma Bizier, who soared in the title role in Maggie, Karen Burthwright, who has played Broadway and several national theatre tours, and Lee Siebel, who also has Broadway credits to his name.

Adam Brazier, who plays Old Man, the stern yet comical father to Ralphie, says taking on the role makes him feel closer to his own dad, who died in 2020.

“So full disclosure, A Christmas Story is one of my all-time favourite movies. I remember seeing it multiple times in the theatre and I was only 10 at the time (it came out). Everything about that movie and the story in the way it's told through the Jean Shepherd lens, is what I dream Christmas will be like.”

From the movie, Brazier always called his dad “the old man” and he wishes more than anything that his own kids, 12 and 9, will pick up the habit.

At its essence, he says, A Christmas Story is really about a young boy trying to connect to his father.

“So for me, it's like, I'm spending so much time thinking about my father, my father at Christmas, my father angry, which was always funny because, you know he was, he was a very gentle man, but when he was angry …,” he says, breaking into his impersonation of a flustered man who can’t spit out words.

For Jamie McRoberts, who plays Mother, her holiday go-to movie has always been the Christmas Vacation films.

“That was our family movie. I had seen A Christmas Story a few times, but it didn't really speak to me until I became a parent, until I had become an adult. And I'm looking back on it, and I'm looking at these sweet kids and the stuff they're going through, and it's absurd and ridiculous. And, you know, I thoroughly enjoy it so much more now.”

Her husband is a big fan of A Christmas Story, so it is now part of her family’s tradition, says McRoberts, who lives in Burlington.

“I don't like the Hallmark Christmas movies because, to me, that's not real. I like Christmas with a bit of chaos … I think that's what speaks to me about it, is that that it's a very true rendering of what Christmas is for most people. I can't imagine that people go through Christmas without some sort of hiccup or bump.”

Brazier says the musical is faithful to the movie but also manages to flesh out smaller moments in the film, making them into full production numbers.

“It just amps the storytelling up even further. But you're hitting all the things that people who know the movie are going to want to see,” says the Markham native who now lives on Prince Edward Island and is the artistic director of the Charlottetown Festival.  

“It hits on all of the movie’s most iconic moments, but it also adapts them into the musical theatre form really nicely. When it chooses to sing is very smart, and it gives us the lens of the mom when we really want that heart. You know, we want to be grounded into the feeling of family and Christmas. And we want that, that serene, idyllic beauty, so then we can completely interrupt it with the Bumpus Hounds and the screaming gibberish of the father.”

McRoberts, 36, debuted at Theatre Aquarius in 2023 as Sadie in the acclaimed Maggie, after practically growing up in the King William Street theatre. She started in the summer theatre program at seven, attended the junior and senior schools and even taught in the junior school.   

“This building is kind of my home,” she says.

The two actors sat down with HAMILTON CITY Magazine just over a week into rehearsals. In less than a week, they will be “on the deck,” rehearsing on the main stage in anticipation of the Dec. 4 premiere.

Both actors say Moore is a steady hand at the helm of an ambitious musical.

“She gives a lot of room for you to find your own voice and your own way through it,” says Brazier, “but with good guidance as to what the world is and the world that she's looking for, and the urgency or the stakes that she needs at certain times. But it's a very fun and it's very warm and safe room to be in. And that's a real, real pleasure.”

For McRoberts, Moore knows exactly what to say.

“The other day, I went to her and I said, ‘You know, I'm really struggling with this part of Mother and the fact that it's 1940s era, and what that means for women, and that's going against every part of my nature.’ But she just rephrased something to me, speaking specifically to who I am, Jamie, as the individual. And I went, ‘Aha, OK, I get it.’ I find she's lovely that way … I think she sees people, and I also think she interacts with the children and our young company in the most beautiful way, because that is a big task. There are 19 kids in the show.”

For this role, Brazier is breaking his own rule that he doesn’t want to hear a Christmas carol or see a holiday decoration until Dec. 1.

“Doing these shows is the thing that puts me the most in the Christmas mood. Having kids in the audience and having kids in the show is what it's about. It makes it very magical. Two kids were singing when the Old Man comes home and I welled up with tears. I'm like, this isn't even a sad moment. There were just two kids singing like angels.”

McRoberts says she is a “secret Christmas-er. So I like to pretend that I don't like it. But deep down, I think I do,” she says.

“I think what holiday musicals do is they get rid of the consumerism part of it, and they get down to what the actual messaging is, which is just love, kindness and peace.”

A Christmas Story runs from Dec. 4 to Dec. 22. Tickets are here.