Nothing beats live theater during the holiday season, and Portland Center Stage always manages to put on the most entertaining shows. The Old Armory Theater, with its classy decorations and modern art, is an absolutely awesome venue. Besides, it’s right next door to the Deschutes Brewery.

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General Atmosphere
Carol is set in Victorian England, while Story takes place in 1950’s Indiana. While Carol‘s elegant period costumes are charming, the trappings are undeniably “heavy.” It comes standard with four ghosts a-scolding, three thieves a-plundering, two welfare solicitors, and a small crippled child who briefly dies. Maybe in more economically prosperous times, these crises would seem comfortably oblique, mere whimseys of an improbable tale. But this year, Ebenezer Scrooge’s offhanded talk about dispensing the poor to “prisons and workhouses,” might have cut a little too close to the bone. While Carol is dogged by death and poverty, the Parker family in A Christmas Story is dogged by—well, actual dogs, namely their neighbors’ unruly hounds. Other unthreateningly trivial concerns include a slightly stern teacher, a smallish bully, and a frozen flagpole that proves unfit for licking.

One man against the world
In this respect, the two stories are almost the same. Scrooge is pitted against a world that rejects his pessimism, while Ralphie’s quest for a Red Ryder air rifle is constantly put to a challenge. Okay, so Scrooge is an irascible old loan shark, Ralphie Parker a naive nine-year-old. Nevertheless, each is One Man, trudging face-first into a cold winter wind of dissent.

The motive
Well, Ralphie kind of wants to “save the world,” inasmuch as his age-nine mind can grasp that concept. He fantasizes of protecting his friends in dangerous “Indiana swampland,” and fending off “insensate evil” (in the form of stripe-shirted masked robbers). But it’s clear that he mostly wants to be a cowboy badass, as his fantasies portray him wearing spangly fringed dude-duds fit for Nashville royalty, and being repeatedly called a hero. Meanwhile, Scrooge seems to want to punish the world for what he sees as unearned laziness and unwarranted cheer. In a way, both of these quests are allegedly about the common good, but really about ego. Scrooge wants to be recognized as the superior worker, in the same way Ralphie wants to be seen as the most capable cowboy.

The storytelling slant
Carol‘s narrator openly passes judgment on Mr. Scrooge. He initially rebukes him as “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner,” but eventually praises him as “as good a man as the good old city knew.” Meanwhile, the narrator in A Christmas Story is an older version of Ralphie, and as such, indulgently biased. While some of his observations are wry, he mostly defends his younger self, embracing and reliving the boy’s naïveté. At PCS, Darius Pierce dispatches this role with an easy charm. He also shows a rare ability to be exactly as present in a scene, as is warranted, blending into the wallpaper to await the next cue.

The naysayers
Various members of Scrooge’s community call him out for his “humbug” attitude. When they fail to reach him, the spirit world chimes in, sending a series of ghosts to set him straight. They warn Scrooge that if he doesn’t show more compassion for his fellow man, he’ll face dire consequences. Ralphie is also repeatedly warned—by his parents, his teacher, and even the mall Santa Claus. “You’ll shoot your eye out!” they say whenever he dares to voice his beebee-gun dreams. In both plays, a lot of the action consists of the hero getting told “no.”

The outcome
Scrooge cracks under the supernatural pressure, reverses his old impulses and goes on a “save the world” spree, and the community rewards him for his contrition and new-found empathy. But Ralphie sticks to his guns, and ends up getting what he wants, “an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.” He then immediately almost shoots his eye out (just as his admonishers warned), but lies about it, and “sleeps the sleep of the just and fulfilled.” He has triumphantly learned nothing, except that persistence pays off.

The only reason we’re even engaging in this little intellectual exploration, is because A Christmas Story as performed by PCS, is beyond reproof. Suffice to say the much-beloved movie has been translated fluently to the stage. There’s a cutaway two-story dollhouse-style set, a tinsel-lined stairway to Santa, a snowy lane, and even a car with working headlights. The characters fill their movie-mandated roles, and even seem to wear the movie-dictated clothes. Nothing is left to the imagination, and actually, the show is spectacular for it. It makes perfect sense that a play that’s about indulging childish fantasies, would be produced with all the desired bells and whistles. Kudos to all directorial and logistics personnel, for going all the way. If there’s anything to be learned from A Christmas Story, it’s that it’s okay to get everything you want.

So adieu, old fusty English moralism, and howdy, American entitlement. For better and worse, we’ve seen the changing of the guard.

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It isn’t that PCS’ version (freely adapted by Phil Grecian, and directed by Rose Riordan) is poorly put together, or underwhelming. In fact, the cast for this staged version of Jean Shepherd’s sentimental tale of a 1940s Christmas is charming, almost loveable, and the technical elements impress in more ways than one. But PCS has given itself an uphill battle, asking the audience to forget beloved scenes and characters from the film that work much better in their original medium. 

A Christmas Story is the tale of Ralphie, a Middle American kid living in Hohman, Indiana, who desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. It’s a story full of imaginative childhood wonder, instantly relatable to anyone who has ever believed that the right gift can cure all ails. PCS’ play follows Ralphie through the many fantastical plots he concocts to convince the adults in his life that the BB gun is the gift of the ages, but many of the film’s original images, lines, and expressions fall short in the theatrical setting.

Slight additions to the script—like that of the older Ralphie, played by the charismatic and grounded Darius Pierce—help to alleviate this issue, but the distraction of the subject matter inevitably takes over. Ultimately, the departure from the time-tested motion picture may have been in vain. It’s a hard thing to come to grips with, especially for the avid live-performance supporter, but sometimes a film should stay a film.

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Portland Center Stage has set itself a big challenge in unwrapping this charming Christmas present, which focuses on a 9-year-old Ralphie Parker and his oddball Indiana family’s December trials and triumphs, for the live stage. Unfortunately, Philip Grecian’s stolid adaptation manages to suck much of the nostalgic holiday cheer out of this story of BB gun mania. The biggest problem? There’s two Ralphies. While the film overlays its wry adult narration on kid Ralphie’s cherubic face, PCS’s version forces kid actor Michael Cline to share the stage with his grown-up alter ego Darius Pierce, the latter often blandly pontificating over the minutiae of kid life (Little Orphan Annie decoder rings, schoolyard bullies with yellow eyes) while the former ineffectually mimes the action. That makes for a crowded stage, which is dressed in a spot-on re-creation of the film’s shabby Midwestern living room, kitchen, and smoke-choked stairway down to the blasted furnace. To make it worse, this version crams in at least another 20 minutes of superfluous dialogue plucked from Shepherd’s book, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, leading to a 2 1/2-hour stage-show slog that feels like an extended DVD edition of the film—complete with a pointless love interest for Ralphie.

Despite the issues, the cast performs with screwball charm. Ebbe Roe Smith shines as Ralphie’s turkey-obsessed, furnace-fighting “Old Man,” blasting off into fantastic fits of garbled obscenity and misplaced rage when the occasion calls for it. Fourth-grader Harrison Goyette nails kid brother Randy, right down to the kitchen-table piggy snorts and snowsuit waddle, lending much-needed giggles to the show.

All in all, A Christmas Story is not a bad show; the problem is simply that a straight adaptation doesn’t add anything to the original. I couldn’t help hoping that at some point Ralphie’s exhausted mom would break into song about her love of cooking meatloaf and red cabbage or that evil Scut Farkus would get his own dance number. Poking fun at a cult movie worked for the Tony-nominated adaptation of Xanadu. Maybe it’s time somebody gave Ralphie and his blue-steel beauty a Christmas song of their own.

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Oh, how Ralphie wants this gun. But along with the many comic by-products of a focused yet fumbling desire, what the stage adaptation that opened Friday at Portland Center Stage delivers is a sense of deeper needs and how we struggle to meet them. After all, we wouldn’t be so invested in Ralphie’s Christmas quest if we didn’t understand how meaningful a little victory can be.
     
Ralphie (Portland 6th grader Michael Cline) really could stand to be a winner for once. At school he’s overshadowed by the likes of Helen, who writes a third-grade book report on Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” On the streets, he’s in constant danger from the neighborhood bully. And home (tellingly rendered in Tony Cisek’s aptly shabby scenic design) is a place of sooty walls and monotonous meatloaf-and-cabbage dinners, where a slip of the tongue gets you a mouth full of Lifebuoy.

He envisions himself, though, not as a kid of modest means, but a hero to family and friends, ever-ready with his trusty rifle to vanquish anything from masked marauders to giant jungle snakes.

Everyone else envisions him shooting his eye out.

Young Ralphie’s grand quest to overcome this objection is narrated by Adult Ralph, played here by reliable PCS regular Darius Pierce, guiding us through his memories with a wry affect that suggests a less-precious John Hodgman.

Ralph’s recollections of his father make up the richest comic vein here. Pierce’s mining is deadpan (“The Old Man’s vast array of invective enriched my childhood. He worked in profanity the way that others worked in oils or clay.”). The hilarious Ebbe Roe Smith as the Old Man digs in with gusto (“Why I’ll be a dog-nab cinnamon dish!!” or “I’ll be a summering bishop!” go the family-friendly renditions of his outbursts).

Beneath his muttered curses, the Old Man harbors a yearning not all that different from his son’s, one that won’t be assuaged by the large can of Simonize awaiting him under the Christmas tree. He, too, wants—somehow—to feel special, even if that’s just by winning a garish lamp through a mail-in contest or escaping the daily grind of meatloaf. It’s a toss-up which is the more delightful comic moment here: Old Man and Mother (Valerie Stevens) switching the light on and off in a protracted dance/battle or the way the Old Man comes unglued with excitement when it’s finally time to shop for the Christmas turkey.

Adapting such a popular movie for the stage has its advantages and disadvantages. For some, familiarity probably will help this story go over; for others, it might magnify any misstep. On opening night, the first act could have stood a little more energy and the clunky movement of a row of fences (which provided the scene for Ralphie’s walk to school and also served to hide other set changes) was distracting from time to time.

But director Rose Riordan has drawn strong performances out of not just the PCS veterans (which also include Laura Faye Smith as Ralphie’s teacher) but cast of nine children, of whom Hannah Wilson stands out as a classmate with a shy crush on Ralphie.

And more importantly, Riordan has located the heart as well as the humor in the story. Almost like she was looking down the sight of a Red Ryder air rifle.

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