Book-It Repertory's Owen Meany's Christmas Pageant: Faithful Re-Telling Of Holiday Classic

Book-It Repertory Theatre and author John Irving have a good thing going. Last year Book-It enjoyed the success of their adaptation of the novelist's The Cider House Rules, which was initially adapted into the Book-It Style(tm) in 1994, and premiered at the Seattle Rep. This year the theater revives their former holiday standard, Owen Meany's Christmas Pageant, which adapts selections of Irving's 1989 hit novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Now "perhaps the most performed Book-It adaptation," Owen ran in Seattle every year from 1997 to 2002. Finally emerging from a seven-year hiatus, the play is back, still under the auspices of its initial adaptors and Book-It founding co-artistic directors, Jane Jones and Myra Platt.

Most of Owen Meany's Christmas Pageant dramatizes action from the fourth chapter of the source novel, The Little Lord Jesus. The play first draws some exposition from the front of the novel, quickly and effectively establishing relationships and doing some endearing character development, before transitioning into Christmas-mode, where the show thrives.

The title character is a diminutive boy from working class stock with a "wrecked voice" who, in spite of so many would-be handicaps, charms, manipulates, beguiles, and even intimidates his way to social control and positions of leadership. He is fiercely intelligent, clever, and empowered, possessed of the conviction he is an "instrument of God." Owen's best friend (and narrator of the novel), John Wheelwright, is in many ways the opposite: A descendant of a high-society New England pedigree Wheelwright is underachieving and in many ways ambivalent. Regardless of their differences and a tumultuous series of trying ordeals, the two are steadfast friends, allies and mutual admirers of one another.

Owen Meany's Christmas Pageant, told in fond, comedic, bittersweet reflection by a Wainwright recalling the antics of his dearest friend, remembers one particular winter in Gravesend, New Hampshire, in the middle of the 20th century, when the nativity story as typically rendered by the Episcopalian church would no longer suffice for Owen Meany:

One year Owen, who had played the Angel Gabriel severally in years prior, was finally determined no longer to do so. He was tired of being strung up by a crane-like apparatus to dangle precariously in the air before the congregation. He was weary of the pastor's incongruous interpretations of the story. Much of the casting, costuming and design work needed to be re-imagined. An unwavering insistence and a persuasive tongue garner Owen all the influence and de facto authority he needs to turn the pageant, and the processes preceding, on their ears. For Owen having seized so much power, for him having undercut the old methods, he finds himself suddenly at war with the comparably strong-willed, severe, controlling pastor's wife.

Owen Meany's Christmas Pageant is a light, fast-paced, rollicking show full of humor and heart. Irving's prose is beautifully respected and delighted in, his characters brought tastefully and dynamically to life. The twenty-one person cast provides a kinetic energy throughout, most of them portraying children with an enthusiastic wink. The show is selling out rapidly, so be sure to buy tickets in advance.

November 29 through December 23 // Center House Theatre, Seattle Center // $25 - $44, show times and tickets here, or call box office at 206.216.0833