A Child’s Christmas in Wales – 07 December 2024

The most outstanding element of A Child’s Christmas in Wales was the musical direction. The medleys at times included up to five songs, sung with verve and joy. The vocal arrangements were delightfully complex, and the cast did a phenomenal job with dynamics and balance in a space with no microphones or audio engineer to mix and balance their voices.

When it came to the text between the carols, some nuance was lost. After a while, the adjectives piled on adjectives resulted in a loss of understanding. I became uncertain if I was watching a Christmas revue or if there was supposed to be a plot to keep track of. Conceptually, Dylan Thomas’s Christmas was told through the eyes of an adult looking back at a simpler time. It is certainly intended to be a joyful one, but the lack of complexity and overabundance of joy is at times overwhelming, even within a 75 minute run time. It felt less like a story, and more like a recounting of happenings, but the lack of commitment to characterizations made each happening seem the same. At times, I wished the actors would slow down their speech, rather than speeding through to the next song, so that I could process what I was hearing to prevent the meaning of these dialogues from getting lost.

The bells were beautiful, and one voice in particular (Ashley Robinson) stood out as nuanced and inspiring. As a whole, my enjoyment of the show was hindered most by the overuse of vocal vibrato, particularly by the women, in a setting that didn’t need it. It may seem small, but it contributed to the general lack of good story telling.

And yet there were magical moments. I haven’t heard some of these hymns for a long time, and there was an element of mystical excitement hearing them woven together in a way that was new to me. The moments with Polly McKie as the alcoholic aunt were humorous, and her commitment to being a character actor was evident even in ensemble moments. Reed Lancaster’s Dylan Thomas was very restrained when singing, and I wasn’t sure if it was meant as part of the character of  being a child surrounded by a world that he doesn’t realize the full beauty of or if it was an actual discomfort singing.

If I had to hazard a guess at what failed here, I’d say that the lack of audio mixing capabilities resulted in directorial choices to spend most of the cast’s time on the hymns. Because they lacked an audio mixer, they seemed very focused (and rightly so) on maintaining the balance of chords, harmonies, and countermelodies. They didn’t have the bandwidth to think about which words in their lines needed emphasis because they fit into a larger puzzle piece. They memorized the words and they said them, sometimes quite rapidly. The scene with the snowball throwing was the most unique—but very out of place because the show didn’t build into it or out of it with any real sense of commitment.

A show like this needs design elements and staging to be understood, because people don’t talk like they did in Dylan Thomas’s day now, 100 years later. The beauty of this story could still be understood with the help of lighting, sound, staging, characterization, and direction that pays heed to what can be emphasized to advance the plot. Though certainly aesthetically beautiful, Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of A Child’s Christmas in Wales didn’t give me much to think about, though it would have been delightful as a musical revue without the interludes that left me struggling to put the pieces together. The show was cheery and jolly and didn’t ask a lot of the audience other than sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying Christmas. If that’s what you’re seeking this holiday season, then this is the show for you!

I attended this performance on a press pass from Print Shop PR.