THEATER

It's a wonder: Rep’s holiday show holds special place for director

Mary Murphy (from left), Larissa Klinger and Larry Daggett put Bedford Falls on the "air" in It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Chris Cranford of Cranford & Co.
Mary Murphy (from left), Larissa Klinger and Larry Daggett put Bedford Falls on the "air" in It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Chris Cranford of Cranford & Co.

Five actors — Larry Daggett, Alan Dronek, Patrick Halley, Larissa Klinger and Mary Murphy — play all the residents of the little town of Bedford Falls and at least one aspiring angel in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, adapted by Joe Landry from the classic 1946 Frank Capra film.

The show runs Friday through Dec. 29 at Little Rock's Arkansas Repertory Theatre. There's a final preview performance, with a pre-show talk by director Giovanna Sardelli, at 7 p.m. today.

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play

What: Adapted by Joe Landry from the classic 1946 Frank Capra film, based on a script by Capra, Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Jo Swerling, Philip Van Doren Stern and Michael Wilson; with original musical arrangements by Kevin Connors.

Where: Arkansas Repertory Theatre, 601 Main St., Little Rock.

When: 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11-13, 18-20 and 26-27; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, 21 and 28, 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 15, 22 and 29; 7 p.m. Dec. 23.

Tickets: $20-$75 with discounts for full-time students, senior citizens and military personnel

Information: (501) 378-0405

http://TheRep.org">TheRep.org

Alan Dronek and Larissa Klinger share an intimate on-air moment in It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Chris Cranford of Cranford & Co. 



(from Left to Right) Alan Dronek, Larissa Klinger
Alan Dronek and Larissa Klinger share an intimate on-air moment in It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Chris Cranford of Cranford & Co. (from Left to Right) Alan Dronek, Larissa Klinger

Special events

• Today: Noon — Panel discussion with members of the cast and creative team, Clinton School of Public Service Distinguished Speaker Series, Sturgis Hall, Clinton School of Public Service, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock. 6 p.m. — Beer Night with Diamond Bear Brewing Co., complimentary beer tasting, sponsored by the Arkansas Times. 7 p.m. — Preview performance. (Also Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Pay What You Can Night — buy tickets in person at the box office starting at 9 a.m., limit two tickets per.) A 6:15 p.m. director’s talk precedes the show.

• Friday: Post-show Opening Night Champagne Reception with the cast, including champagne toast and light hors d’oeuvres.

• 7 p.m. Saturday: “Pay Your Age Night,” sponsored by Little Rock Soiree and Zeteo Coffee. Up to 50 patrons (limit: four tickets per household) age 22-40 can “pay their age” for tickets; Zeteo Coffee will be pouring complimentary beverages.

• 6 p.m Dec. 12: Beer Night with Stone’s Throw Brewing.

Sardelli's previous Rep outing, in October 2017, was at the helm of The School for Lies, David Ives' poetic adaptation of Molière's The Misanthrope, widely praised for its production values and its general hilarity.

Halley, in his fourth show at the Rep, was in that cast. (Theatergoers may also remember him as Smee in 2016's Peter and the Starcatcher.) Daggett is making his ninth Rep appearance, which includes the theater's 2008 production of this show.

Sardelli had been tapped to direct William Shakespeare's As You Like It in February, before the Rep, facing financial collapse in April 2018, canceled the 2018-19 season.

Sardelli says she had not yet come up with a conceptualization of how that show might have gone. "We didn't even get far enough to even think about it," she explains. "We [she and Rep founder and interim head honcho, the late Cliff Baker] were just at the stage of talking about designers."

Director Giovanna Sardelli helms her second show at Arkansas Rep. Special to the Democrat-Gazette
Director Giovanna Sardelli helms her second show at Arkansas Rep. Special to the Democrat-Gazette

Though her directing career has focused mostly on new works (her full-time job is as director of new works for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, the most recent Tony Award recipient for Regional Theater), Sardelli says she started out as a classically trained actress — working in Shakespeare. But she hasn't gotten a chance to direct a Shakespeare play since.

So while School for Lies and even It's a Wonderful Life might seem at first glance to be classic theater, Sardelli says working with living playwrights makes it "new."

In It's a Wonderful Life, altruistic everyman George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart in the movie) runs a struggling building-and-loan operation, serving Bedford Falls' less privileged citizens. Faced with the threat of scandal, financial ruin and jail, he experiences a crisis of faith and attempts suicide on Christmas Eve. His guardian angel second class, Clarence, on a mission to earn his wings, shows George what the world would have been like if he had never been born, thereby restoring George's will to live.

It's a bit unfair to say that Sardelli is obsessed with the story, but she says she has championed it just about every place she has worked over the years.

And she confides that she breaks into tears every time she sees the movie, and she has been carrying around a transcript of a 1947 on-air interview with Stewart, which she says she pulls out and reads again every Christmas.

"It's one of the most important stories there is," she says. "What we value, who we value, how we treat our fellow human beings."

And this radio-play adaptation is "a really inventive and fun way" to tell it, she adds. Landry's script strips the story down to "the heart of the matter." It involves trimming out a number of extraneous characters, though, she says, "he sure crammed a lot of them in."

Alan Dronek (left) and Patrick Halley cut up a little in It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Chris Cranford of Cranford & Co. 



(from Left to Right) Alan Dronek, Patrick Halley
Alan Dronek (left) and Patrick Halley cut up a little in It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Chris Cranford of Cranford & Co. (from Left to Right) Alan Dronek, Patrick Halley

The production, however, isn't stripped down at all. Jo Winiarski has designed a massive radio-studio set that contains what Sardelli describes as a few "Easter eggs" for fans of the film. There is no sound-effects person. However, the actors create their own effects, and through having the women in the cast "man" the Foley tables, sound designer Jane Shaw pays tribute to Ora Daigle Nichols, the only woman who made a living as a sound engineer in the early 20th century and who led the sound effects team for radio's The March of Time (1937-1945).

Stewart, Sardelli notes, gave up his very promising acting career and enlisted in the Army — before Pearl Harbor — as a private. "He served with everyone else on the same footing." It was one of the things that led him to disdain the terms "common man" — "he thought it was a terrible phrase for human beings," she says — and "the little people."

"They're us. We're all the same people," she says.

And, post-war, Stewart wasn't planning to go back to Hollywood. "He didn't think it was important," Sardelli explains.

Director Frank Capra changed Stewart's mind with a story about a man who was so distraught that he was contemplating committing suicide on Christmas Eve and its message that there is no such thing as an important person.

Sardelli explains as she details the top-of-the-line production values this way: "This is the Arkansas Repertory Theatre holiday show. There are surprises that [affect] everyone directly. And there are magical moments that make it bigger than a traditional radio play."

The film's message not only lasts but resonates today, she says: "Do we want to live in an America that resembles Pottersville — or Bedford Falls?"

Weekend on 12/05/2019

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story listed an incorrect date for the final show of It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. The show runs through Dec. 29.

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