The Midnight Train Crossing

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a book written by L. Frank Balm, who wrote the Wizard of Oz and the other Oz books. We have, somewhere in my house, and old VHS tape of a claymation movie of this, which I vaguely remember. I remember I liked it. It's not the one with Frank Sinatra as the singing mailman narrator. It's a different one.
But actually the play wasn't quite like the book (which I have not read) or the movie (which I only vaguely remember). It's based on it, but it also plays on the "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" letter.

Basically, the play opens with a young girl named Ginny on the borderline of believing or not believing in Santa. Santa decides to step in and sends Virginia forward in time to fetch Ginny. From there, Santa sends the two girls on a journey through his life. But this is the story of Santa Wizard of Oz style.
"Baum had already fashioned the world of Oz when in 1902 he wrote of a foundling boy left outside the magical forest of Burzee in the land of Oz. Raised by nymphs, ryls, knooks and fairies, Claus would grow up to dedicate his life to see the happiness of children" (From the "Directors Notes" in the playbill)
Not your typical Christmas story. :)

It was nice that they had a lot of references to the Oz books. Ginny is a big fan, she tells her brother that she's read all of them, and she has a toybox filled with the characters. But no Elphaba :)

It's always a surprise at these shows in how many of the characters are played by the professional actors, and how many are by the children of the First Stage Academy. In this version, there were three adults and the rest were the students. That said, we didn't realize some of them until we looked it up in the bios in the program.

Santa Claus was played by Dan Katula and he was awesome. For the first act, he was having a grand time serving as narrator. He seemed to love revisiting his past and showing it off. He was a pretty lively Santa who didn't mind breaking the rules to save Ginny's believing heart. He definitely made Santa seem like a fun loving guy, much to the annoyance of his sidekick, Peter the knook.

Now would probably be a good time to explain the various creatures that lived in the forest of Burzee. Burzee is a magical place where humans are not permitted (naturally) where all of the magical creatures live. It's ruled by Prince Ak, the master huntsman, (Played by Chiké Johnson) and the queen of the Nymphs, Zurline (Jeana Stillman).
Necile [Na-Seal] (Bridgette Well) is another wood Nymph - the one that finds the baby and names him Claus, for that means "little one."
Nuteer [New-Teer, rhymes with deer] (Gabriela Nuñez) is a Ryl,[Rill] sort of a flower fairy. The Ryls care for the flowers, just as the Nymphs care for the trees. They paint them. The Knooks [Nook] are a third race - Peter (Zach Spaciel) is a Knook. The Knooks reminded me a bit of satyrs, or maybe they looked like dwarves with tails. Anyway, the Knooks are the guardians of the animals of the forest.
And finally there are the fairies, who invisibly guard over humans. Or maybe just human children, that wasn't entirely clear. Wisk (Kira Patterson) is the fairy that guards over Claus.

The thing that stood out the most for me was the costumes of all the immortals. The costume designer took a lot of inspiration from plants, considering the Nymphs and the Ryls look after trees and flowers. And me being a fantasy geek, this was right up my alley.
I liked Necile's costume the best out of all the Nymphs, she had long sparkly green hair. Nuteer's costume didn't look that different, other then that she was wearing a flower for a hat. I already said that the Knooks looked like dwarves with tails kinda like a dog or cat. Wisk, the fairy was pretty. She had iridescent wings that looked like they could actually bear her - they were big enough.

All of the young actors for the main parts were very awesome. The modern day Ginny was played by Lindsay Chatham. The best line in the whole play belonged to her.
Ginny and Virginia find themselves outside of the forest, and they find the baby Santa in a basket. She's startled to discover that he's naked. Virginia (Anya Kopischke) isn't too phased by that, after all, he is just a baby.
After they realize that he's Santa, Ginny comes out with "I saw Santa naked!" When the girls leave, Santa is practically rolling on the stage laughing at that.

I was impressed with Bridget Well, who played Necile, Claus's mother. I didn't realize that she was a student until I read her bio. She was very good. I also liked Zach Spaciel who played Peter the Knook. He was very grumpy and he was so good at it. It was pretty funny.

The young Claus was played by J.T. Backes, who did good although I didn't really care for the way the costume designer had his hair. It was long and red and in his eyes. I wanted to push it back. Still, his performance was good. Although I'm not quite sure where one would find an orthodontist in the middle of the forest of Berzee.

Since Santa wouldn't be complete without his reindeer, enter Flossie (Leah Costello) and Glossie (Catlin Sennott). They got a lot of funny lines, as they played off of each other.
Another good line was right after Santa slipped in the snow and asked them how they can manage to be so swift and agile in the snow.
They respond: "Because we're deer. And you're not."

All together it was a really cute play with really awesome costumes and quite a few brilliant performers. It wasn't the typical Christmas play, but that was okay because it was still awesome.
At the end of the play, Ginny wakes up and finds an autographed copy of the book, with a note from "SC".
Now I have to go out and find the book

The play ends on this note:
"the most real things in the world are those that cannot be seen"