Holiday Theatre at GF High Schools

As Christmas holidays approach, people expect seasonal live entertainment. Grand Forks Red River and Central High Schools both presented stage productions last weekend that promoted the Christmas spirit (in Red River’s case, literally the past, present, and future).

Red River’s show was a version of Charles Dickens’s classic “A Christmas Carol,” adapted into a stage play by Romulus Linney. Between scenes, a group of carolers sang traditional Christmas carols while set changes, using cleverly designed set pieces on Red River’s thrust stage, were performed before the eyes of the audience.

For such a familiar story, Red River (under the direction of Allison Peterson) did a fine job of bringing Dickens’s characters to life and dramatizing the well-known situations effectively. The entire cast threw themselves into the roles (and hints of British accents) with enthusiasm, raising the performance well above the ritual re-enactment one might expect of a plot that nearly the entire audience would already know by heart.

Dominating the cast, as his character dominates the story, was Cody Gerszewski in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Both physically and vocally, Gerszewski’s appropriately melodramatic stage presence brought alternating moments of genuine emotion and broad comedy to a character that might easily be tossed off as a simple caricature.

Niall Davis and Charlie Rerick also did very good jobs, respectively, in the roles of Scrooge as a troubled boy and as a struggling young man whose business decisions eventually alienate his one true love (nicely played by Amanda Smith).

Red River’s “A Christmas Carol” was not merely another holiday-themed event, but rather an entertaining evening with a message at the theatre .

The only real criticism that might be directed at the production is that even though the singers had obviously well-trained voices, all the Christmas carols performed during the scene changes were sung in unison instead of in the traditional four-part harmony.

Central High School’s show was a decidedly unusual selection for Christmas, a medium-length (about 45 minutes) one-act comedy by Michael Frayn about attending live theatre titled “Audience.” Frayn is better-known for “Noises Off,” his hysterical play about performing a play.

Here he turns his distinctively British wit towards a diverse group of playgoers watching a show whose playwright is also in the audience, observing their reactions.

The set was designed to look like the back of a theatre, with four rows of theatre seats on stage facing the actual audience in the auditorium. The ensemble cast was led by Josh Lewis as Keith the playwright, whose wry comments punctuate those of the various audience members, all of whom have individual issues of their own to contend with (besides trying to make sense of his play).

With the play set in a London West End theatre, the cast of “Audience” spoke with quite reasonable facsimiles of British accents, except for Sarah Hysjulien and Chandler Cline, who used Texas accents as the visiting honeymooning couple, a flamboyant young bride and her elderly, out-of-it, rich husband.

It was great to see a fun but lesser-known play like “Audience” performed in Grand Forks, and Central’s cast and crew, under the direction of Todd Aleshire, definitely did it justice.

After a brief intermission, Central put on the holiday portion of the evening, with a Christmas musical concert by five different groups, several of whom were also actors or crew for the play. There was a brass sextet, an a cappella male quartet, a folk-bluegrass group who did “O Little Town of Bethlehem” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun,” three different SATB quartets of Christmas carolers, and the Central High School Madrigal Singers to close out the evening.