Christmas Belles -- threefold

The goofy holiday comedy Christmas Belles has closed at the Sam Bass Theatre in Round Rock and at the Wimberly Players, but you can still catch it through this weekend at the City Theatre in Austin, one of my favorite venues in town.

Three local versions? Four, in fact, if you’re willing to extend your area of coverage to San Antonio, where the show closed this past weekend at the Harlequin Dinner Theatre.

I reviewed the Sam Bass Community Theatre version on November 27 and the following week I took my spouse out to see the Wimberly Players’ version, staged in their tidy, impeccably finished small theatre. She enjoyed the country drive but she turned to me after the show, “Are you REALLY going to see this show three times??”

I did exactly that, catching the City Theatre version last week.

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . .

Upcoming: A Profusion of Christmas Belles, November 21- December 21

The Austin Metro Area (if there is such a thing) will have THREE productions of the holiday comedy Christmas Belles, premiering at different companies:

Christmas Belles, City Theatre, December 4-21

Christmas Belles, Sam Bass Community Theatre, November 21 - December 13

Wimberly Players, November 28 - December 14

On some weekend nights in early December the shows will be running simultaneously!

See the Austin Live Theatre calendar or click on the companies above for ticket information.

Christmas Belles is the middle piece of a trilogy featuring the Futrelle family of the mythical town of Fayro, Texas. The first play was Dearly Beloved; the last is Southern Hospitality. Judging from the number of times they've been produced on the community theatre circuit across the United States, they must be making a mint for their trio of authors.

Here, courtesy of City Theatre Austin, is a summary of Christmas Belles and a description of the authors:

It's Christmas-time in the small town of Fayro, Texas, and the Futrelle Sisters—
Frankie, Twink and Honey Raye - are not exactly in a festive mood. A cranky Frankie is weeks overdue with her second set of twins. Twink, recently jilted and bitter about it, is in jail for inadvertently burning down half the town. And hot-flash-suffering Honey Raye is desperately trying to keep the Tabernacle of the Lamb's Christmas Program from spiraling into chaos. But things are not looking too promising: Miss Geneva, the ousted director of the previous twenty-seven productions, is ruthless in her attempts to take over the show. The celebrity guest Santa Claus—played by Frankie's long-suffering husband, Dub—is passing a kidney stone. One of the shepherds refuses to watch over his flock by night without pulling his little red wagon behind him, the entire cast is dropping like flies due to food poisoning from the Band Boosters' Pancake Supper and, of course, the pageant will be shown live on cable access television for the first time ever. And when Frankie lets slip a family secret that has been carefully guarded for decades, all hope for a successful Christmas program seems lost, even with an Elvis impersonator at the manger. But in true Futrelle fashion, the feuding sisters find a way to pull together in order to present a Christmas program the citizens of Fayro will never forget. Their hilarious holiday journey through a misadventure-filled Christmas Eve is guaranteed to bring joy to your world!

About the authors.

Jessie Jones co-authored the play Dearly Departed as well as its screen adaptation, Kingdom Come, which was released by Fox Searchlight Films in 2002. She has had several short stories published and has written for television sitcoms and an animated series for Walt Disney Productions. Jessie was also a character actor for many years, performing in New York and numerous regional theaters, as well as in TV (Murphy Brown, Designing Women, and Night Court) and film.

Nicholas Hope won the Texas New Playwrights Festival for his first play, A Friend of the Family. He has written for the TV series For Your Love and Teacher’s Pet. For many years, he was also director of casting for Theatre Communications Group in New York and ABC Television in Los Angeles.

Jamie Wooten has written and produced nearly 400 episodes of network television, including four seasons on the classic series The Golden Girls, as well as on the sitcoms For Your Love and Half & Half. He was a recipient of the Writers Guild of America Award for The Earth Day Special. Jamie is also an award-winning BMI songwriter.

“We are all Southerners,” Jones says. (Both she and Hope are Texans, Wooten is from Fremont, N.C.) “We write about Southern characters. We know what they eat for breakfast.”

In Christmas Belles, they’re careful not to make the characters into clichéd hillbillies, Jones says. “This is something that each of us has run into,” she says. “In New York, I was treated as the family pet because I was Southern. This is not Li’l Abner. We cherish these people.”

Reviews of Dracula, Wimberly Players, September 26 - October 19

From one of two reviews posted on the Wimberly Players' website:

"Another outstanding performance was created by Chris Higgins, who could have stepped right out of the pages of an 1885 novel. Not only was he convincing as Harker, the love interest of Mina, the star heroine’s best friend, but he has acquired “the look” of an aristocratic gentleman, who would have been very comfortable in that period of history. The chemistry between him and co-star, Katie Combs Meldrum, was electric and so real, at times I felt like I was an eavesdropper on their private conversations."

"Rebecca Ferguson, as Lucy, the female lead in Dracula, was not only beautiful, and graceful, but the perfect victim. I found myself hoping that she would not succumb to the wiles of the evil vampire, Dracula, as I thought this might lead to her being carried off stage prematurely in a pine box. Just the opposite happens, and the plot thickens. She is a delightful young actress and so much fun to watch."

Click for full reviews