The Arts

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Don't touch that dial!

Radio-play version of beloved holiday classic sends audiences back to a simpler time

By: Kevin Prokosh

26/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Like Santa Claus every December, Philip Grecian is excited about his Christmas presence.

The little-known American theatre adaptor is receiving the rare gift of 125 productions of his stage versions of those Yuletide film favourites It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story opening all over North America before Dec. 25.

THEATRE PREVIEW

It's a Wonderful Life

Manitoba Theatre Centre

Opens tonight, to Dec. 19

Tickets: $33-$85 at 942-6537

It's a wonderful life indeed for the 61-year-old Kansas writer, who annually enjoys visions of fat royalties dancing in his head.

Grecian has written his own plays with modest success, but that's nothing compared to his screen-to-stage transfers of these two heart-warming holiday heavyweights, which appeal to virtually every Who down in Whoville. Recession-stressed theatre brass have noticed.

"The theatres see that title, It's a Wonderful Life, and want to read that script," says Grecian over the telephone from his home in Topeka. "Theatre-goers see that title and they want to go to it. I want to do plays people want to go see."

A Christmas Story -- you know, the one about the little boy with the BB gun -- is by far his bestseller, but It's a Wonderful Life is gaining popularity. Grecian has a straight adaptation of the 1946 Frank Capra movie as well as a radio play, which opens tonight at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.

Companies have discovered the radio alternative allows them to proudly present Capra's much-loved Christmas-based fantasy without having to built costly sets replicating the town of Bedford Falls or employ the 105 actors used in the film.

The MTC production involves 10 actors onstage with a foley artist providing sound effects, all telling the familiar story of George Bailey, a man who works his whole life in a small town trying make good, only to feel he has failed and should end it all.

"I'm setting it in Winnipeg in 1947 at a fictitious radio station, CMTC Winnipeg, with the Red River Radio Players," says director Robb Paterson, whose cast is headed by Toronto's Mike Shara and Mairi Babb. "It's a very community-driven show. There will be radio commercials for iconic Winnipeg businesses like Salisbury House and Polo Park and Peak of the Market."

Grecian successfully adapted Dracula and Frankenstein for a local theatre with a tiny stage and a tinier budget, after which they asked him what he could whip up for Christmastime. He created radio versions of A Christmas Story in 1999 and It's a Wonderful Life four years later. The latter has always been particularly close to his heart.

"It was on TV so much, how could you not be a fan?" he says.

Then there was his idol Jimmy Stewart playing George and, of course, the story's homespun moral.

"My philosophy has been that good guys finish first at last, and that's George Bailey," says Grecian, who ancestry is Welsh, not Greek. "He's a good guy who does good things. Good guys may be temporarily quashed but if they live right they win. George wins. George is us."

Performing in the early radio productions allowed him a unique perspective on how they worked.

"I would be standing at the mike and I would look into the audience and many people had their heads down," recalls Grecian, who began his show-biz career as a child ventriloquist. "At first it threw me. I thought they had fallen asleep, but they were listening to the radio. Their eyes were closed and when there was an interesting sound they would look to see how it was done.

"They were in the imaginary world of the movie. There is no art director like the one inside of your head."

Grecian says in studying the screenplay of It's a Wonderful Life he discovered all kinds of holes in the plot. It was Capra's first independent movie and he called the shoot pure torture. The first version had no angel. The entire flashback structure was imposed during post-production in a desperate attempt to save a movie that wasn't working. In the restructuring Capra lost track of a lot of the movie, Grecian says.

Much of that was forgotten in the spirit-raising generated by the tale of goodwill and good cheer in the face of adversity. Grecian wisely wrapped up that holiday gift with the novelty of seeing a faux radio program.

"What's the most fun is watching the sound-effect crew do their thing," he says. "They run around pulling things, whacking things, breaking things and moving things. It's wonderful theatre to watch. If you crunch a bag of corn starch, it sounds just like a footstep in the snow.

"If you do anything recorded, it's kind of cheating."

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

'Life' story

1938 -- Civil war historian Philip Van Doren Stern writes The Greatest Gift, the short story on which the movie was based.

1943 -- Stern prints the story as a Christmas card; one of the recipients is a Hollywood agent, who convinces RKO Studio to pay $10,000 for the rights.

1945 -- The Greatest Gift appears in Good Housekeeping under the title The Man Who Was Never Born.

1946 -- Opens as A Wonderful Life and flops at the box office.

1947 -- FBI labels it communist propaganda for smearing a banker.

1974 -- Copyright expires, allowing any TV station to air it without charge.

1977 -- TV remake called It Happened One Christmas notable for Marlo Thomas playing George Bailey.

1993 -- Copyright re-established on the score, ending its seasonal saturation on TV.

1997 -- PBS stages the radio version called Merry Christmas, George Bailey, starring Bill Pullman, Penelope Ann Miller, Nathan Lane and Sally Field.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 26, 2009 D1

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