The Hult Center was hopping tonight with two Christmas shows at once: Eugene Ballet had their annual “Nutcracker” in the big hall, and Radio Redux was doing “Miracle on 34th Street” in the smaller Soreng Theater. The Hult lobby was about as festive as it gets before show time, with people taking Christmas selfies in two different setups.
I was at the Soreng for Radio Redux, and am very happy that I was. The show itself — like most Radio Redux fare — is so familiar it almost doesn’t bear remarking on. (If you don’t know the tale from the 1947 movie, look it up here.) And it was done well.
But at the heart of tonight’s show was a remarkable pair of performances, by Achilles Massahos as Kris Kringle and by Adriana Ripley as Susan Walker.
I figured Massahos was bound to be a hit before the lights even came up on the actors. He looks just like Kris Kringle in real life, and acts like him, and it wasn’t going to be a huge stretch for this veteran actor to portray Santa Claus on stage and do it convincingly. And he did.
Adriana Ripley
What blew me away — and, I’d say, pretty much blew away the rest of the audience in the Soreng — was the amazingly strong performance by 12-year-old Adriana. A French immersion student at Roosevelt Middle School in Eugene, she studies dance with Eugene Youth Ballet and has performed in seven productions at Rose Children’s Theatre. This was her debut with Radio Redux.
Adriana brought perfect presence and poise to the stage as Susan, the girl who has been taught by her divorced and embittered mother not to believe in Santa. She projected not just charming confidence, but utter ease with the audience, and is able, without seeming effort, to pack a full range of emotion into a voice that seems too nuanced for her age. A scene she had with Massahos/Kringle was one of the best of the show.
And then came the big surprise: that voice again. After intermission — and remember that Radio Redux plays are done in the format of old-time live radio, so this isn’t as jarring as it might sound — Adriana was brought to center stage for a one-off solo rendition of “O Holy Night.” I was like, wait, what? But then she began to sing, and the power and relaxed assurance of that beautiful voice were transforming. Unlike a lot of young singers who try an anthem like that, she resisted the temptation to show off — though she did hit all the high notes just fine — and brought instead a natural feel to the performance. She was singing to the audience, not at us.
This kid’s got some kind of future on stage.
The rest of the cast was solid as ever. Dan Pegoda, Bary Shaw, Bill Barrett, Scott Barkhurst, Kim Donahey and the other Radio Redux regulars moved the story right along.
They’re doing one more performance, at 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets here.