Bedford Falls is a small town in a big country. For as long as he can remember, George Bailey has wanted to leave it behind and see the world, make a real difference. Somehow though, he never got the chance. Now, on a cold Christmas Eve, he stands on a snow-clad bridge parapet, looking down into the dark, icy river below. He faces ruin, but perhaps one last sacrifice can salvage some small hope for those he loves. But kind eyes are watching, and on the edge of tragedy, George is given a divine opportunity to see how his life has changed so many others.
This new adaptation of ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ by Mary Elliot Nelson follows George and many of the other inhabitants of Bedford Falls from the end of the Great War, through the Depression of the 1930’s, to the end of the Second World War. From high school prom to happy marriage, the wins and the losses, the smiles and heartbreak, the characters both good and bad that make up life in Bedford Falls.
This play is based on the now classic 1946 movie directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart and Donna Reed. It’s an uplifting, moving story of love, redemption and community. It’s also a brilliant, evocative slice of period small town Americana. Don’t miss this Christmas tale par excellence at Coulsdon Community Centre this December.
Review by ‘Inside Croydon’ December 12th 2024
‘A Croydon theatre group has again delivered a Christmas show to warm the cockles of everyone’s hearts’, writes KEN TOWL.
‘There’s only one thing as Christmassy as A Christmas Carol (last year’s wintry offering from Theatre Workshop Coulsdon) and that is It’s A Wonderful Life, the 1946 Frank Capra film starring every man’s everyman, James Stewart.
There are obvious parallels between the two, not least because when Philip Van Doren wrote the short story on which the movie was based, he deliberately based it around the Dickens novel. In both, the protagonist is whisked through the streets of their home town by a supernatural presence, so that they might learn about how things are and how they might be, but while Scrooge learns how much harm he has done, George Bailey learns how much good he has done.
Theatre Workshop Coulsdon think they have landed a bit of a coup by staging It’s A Wonderful Life for their December offering this year: a stage adaptation of the film was only written in 2000, and only made available for amateur companies very recently.
And here it is, for the rest of this week, on the stage at the Coulsdon Community Centre, where Joe Wilson puts in a solid performance as George Bailey, the flawed good man who has, without fanfare, been a force for good in his community.
Reflecting the generosity of his character, Wilson holds back, allowing us to see him through the prism of the people he helps. Thus, his scenes with love interest Mary Hatch are alive with a palpable chemistry that is skillfully generated by TWC regular Indianna Scorziello.
Likewise, Anya Destiny has lots of fun with her role as tart-with-a-heart Violet Bick, whose interest in Bailey is, to say the least, unrequited.
As the story develops, we learn how so many people have been helped by Bailey – he has given Violet money, for example, and expected nothing in return – and we come to understand that this is a man that values friends and family over profit, a man who, if he had never existed would “leave a hole”.
Just as the play has a good man at its centre, it also has a bad man, in Mr Henry F Potter, played by Paul Ford as someone who values money over all else, a ruthless profiteer who appears to be the personification of predatory capitalism. Potter, surely, is the model for Mr (“For once, the rich white man is in control”) Burns from The Simpsons.
It is unsurprising to learn that, in the America of the late 1940s, where they assumed there was a red under every bed, the FBI described the film as having “communist sympathies”. To his credit, Paul Ford drew out every iota of nastiness and darkness from the role. I imagine Ford is a decent and good man in real life but, such was the power of his acting, I think I would probably cross the street if I saw him coming towards me.
And the angel Clarence. There was no angel Clarence, but rather a Clarissa, the star of her own sub-plot, played with panache by Hannah Montgomery who, in her own quest to earn her wings, grinned and gurned and grimaced her way around modest, unassuming George Bailey.
She danced a lot, too, and very well for someone who purported to be over two hundred years old, and seemed to keep the production rolling on at an exciting pace. The whole thing worked.
By the end, eyes were welling up as we came to understand that “a wonderful life” was one filled with love and friends and family and that, despite the concerns of the FBI, profit really was less important.
Yes, there would be a hole in our lives without people like George Bailey in them. And there would be a hole in our lives without the wonderfully creative people at the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon, too.
If you want to have the opportunity to see things like this, then you should go and see them. At the Coulsdon Community Centre, you can have a fancy London night out without the fancy London prices.
In fact in the canteen, they don’t even charge fancy Coulsdon prices. One pound for a cup of coffee and a warm mince pie. Click the link here to book tickets – there are performances tonight, tomorrow and Saturday (at 7.45pm), with 3pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday’.
