Jack Frost broke the ice in Friday night's opening of Jack Frost in Santa Land at the Arkansas Arts Center Children's Theatre in Little Rock.
This little guy has been a bit player on the Christmas stage for more than a century. He used to be known for painting pictures in frost on glass, but the the invention of insulated storm windows put him out of work. Left out in the cold, he had to make do with nipping noses (as in "The Christmas Song"), and looking for a comeback.
Jack finally gets his chance to star in playwright Keith Smith's original tale, directed by Bradley D. Anderson. Jack (Samantha Harrington) is Santa's most mischievous elf in this telling -- in fact, naughty. So bad, he snips Santa's red-and-green-striped suspenders. So bad, Jack's trouble-making threatens to put Christmas on ice. Santa is frozen by the prospect, and it's up to Mrs. Claus to save the big day.
The 50-minute show is set against Jim Lynden's Christmas card-like set design of Santa's cozy home at the North Pole, flanked by green-lit pine trees, gentled with falling snow. But dear old Santa (Brandon Nichols) is in a dither. He has too much work to do, and he has come to the end of his white-bearded patience with Jack's antics. "The boy," he fumes, "is useless!"
Mrs. Claus (Courtney Bennett Baker) knows the only way to save Christmas is to make peace between these two. The show unfolds as a sugar-sprinkled domestic drama of two kind but worried parents with an exasperating child, a sort of blue-haired Dennis the Menace with scissors. Nichols' Santa is comically but genuinely frustrated, and Bennett Baker's Mrs. Claus is sweetly but honestly trying to help.
Harrington's Jack Frost comes through the window like Peter Pan, full of impishness. But underneath the tricks he plays, Jack knows his bad behavior is making trouble for him, too. He counts himself a "zero," but he has no idea how to make good. Harrington deftly plays Jack's self-doubt as well as the trickster. What Jack needs is a way to be responsible and merry at the same time.
Trust Mrs. Claus to find the answer, which only appears to be a bag of Santa's secret magic powder. Actually, it's the magic that mothers and grandmothers have been working on their families all along -- a pinch of patience, a teaspoon of good humor, and a cocoa-dusting of love all around, even for the grumpy and the maddening.
And now that Jack's a big name with billing equal to Santa, and full of Christmas spirit, maybe he can give a hand up to some of the holiday's other less-knowns. Remember, Sinterklass -- you, too, Krampus and Fezziwig -- and you, the Chipmunks, the Barking Dogs and Olive, the Other Reindeer -- show business is all in who you know.
State Desk on 12/01/2018