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Positively 34th Street

Tacoma Little Theatre's "Miracle" is a Santa lope

"MIRACLE OF 34TH STREET": An overly rational little girl gets sideswiped into believing in miracles and myths. Photo courtesy of Tacoma Little Theatre

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What do you want from a Christmas play? If you're like most people, you want sparkly lights, a jolly Saint Nick with a real beard, tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and a reminder of the true, commercial-free meaning of Christmas (brought to you by Coca-Cola). If the lobby smells like chocolate and peppermint, so much the better. You want the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping and year-end crunches at work to feel more like the wonder and excitement your kids lavish on the season. You want the kaleidoscopic bounty under the tree to mean more than a breath-shortening Visa bill. In short, you want some damn Christmas magic, thank you very much, and you'll get it from Miracle on 34th Street, Tacoma Little Theatre's big-hearted paean to the man with the bag.

I was never taught to believe in Santa, so, like cynical Susan (Adysen Barkhurst) in Miracle, I always found the play's motto, "Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to," fatuously close to the definition of an easy mark. Maybe there's a reason we evoke bygone eras to find that old holiday humbug; it's hard to find on a Retina display. Be that as it may, director Casi Wilkerson was wise to leave Miracle in its 1947 timeframe. The affected acting styles offer a faster route to sentimentality, and in this context, that's a plus. It also allows for the inclusion of some absolutely gorgeous Christmas music, including (of course) Nat King Cole's "Christmas Song" from 1946. (Incidentally, if you're anyone but Natalie Cole and record your own version of that song, you should be whipped in the street.) Wilkerson also finds a jauntily jingoistic number I'd never heard before, called "A Merry American Christmas."

Of all the actors, Paul Sobrie most thoroughly adopts a pre-Method acting style. Tacoma favorite Elliot Weiner is a steely Santa, and Elena Easley and Gabe McClelland make a charming, handsome couple. I very much enjoyed Jefri Peters's Fargo-accented Shellhammer, which lives at exactly the right altitude over the top. Blake York's rotating sets are spot-on, especially the way they drift through warm, nostalgic holiday vignettes during scene changes. Of course, all this 1940s stateliness comes at a price: the show feels longer than its two-and-a-half-hour running time, and yawns were heard from impatient patrons throughout. I didn't find the show boring, merely slow and deliberate. For once, I think that's a mood Wilkerson's eliciting, rather than a technical flaw. Christmas stories don't need to be paced like a summer popcorn movie. They're meant to help us breathe and relax.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've seen five Christmas shows in two weekends, plus financed Amazon for a year. All that gift shopping and Yuletide merriment put me in the mood for some cider and a warm sugar cookie. Happy holidays!

TACOMA LITTLE THEATRE, MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, THROUGH DEC. 23, 7:30 P.M. FRIDAY-SATURDAY, 2 P.M. SUNDAY, $12.50-$24.50, 210 N. I ST., TACOMA, 253.272.2281

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