Two years doesn’t a tradition make.
The Black Swamp Players are returning for a second helping of Barbara Robinson’s heartwarming comedy
"The Best Christmas Pageant Ever."
The show opens tonight for a weekend run at First United Methodist Church in Bowling Green. Shows are
today, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
After last year’s success, returning directors Janet and Guy Zimmerman are careful not to get as
complacent about the show as the organizers of the play’s pageant have gotten.
The show is recast with only Bob Walters reprising his role as Charlie. Returning actors get mixed and
matched with parts, so last year’s Beth Bradley, Joanna Slembarski, gets the plumb role of Imogene the
ringleader of the ruffian Herdman crew. Stephanie Truman who last year played the much put upon Grace
Bradley, the mom pressed into service to direct the pageant, this year gets to play the controlling
Helen Armstrong who gets to put it upon Emily Wahrman as Grace.
The result has the comforting familiarity of a holiday standard but with new faces with the comedy and
sentimentality cranked up a bit.
That’s fitting for a play that has the Herdman crew showing the smug congregation of a small town church
the true meaning of the Christmas story.
Drawn by the promise of dessert, the Herdmans invade the church just in time to bully their way into all
the lead parts of the Christmas pageant. Imogene pushes aside the putative Mary, the snotty Alice
Wendelken (Grace Ermie). The oldest brother Leroy (Maddox Brosius) assumes the role of Joseph while his
brothers played by Connor Keeran, Sam Wahrman and Nataleigh Hartman march into the roles of the Three
Kings, bearing a ham as well as the more traditional and less practical gifts.
And the youngest Gladys (Rose Walters and Aubrey Hartman) is the Angel of the Lord straight out of Marvel
Comics … shazaam! Hartman played the role Wednesday and she punched out her announcement of the birth of
Jesus with glee. "He’s in the barn," she tells the cowed shepherds.
That the Herdmans don’t know the Nativity story provides the pretext for Grace to tell them and in the
course of their tangled misunderstandings force the audience to hear the story anew.
But change isn’t what this church pageant is supposed to be about. "There’s never anything different
about the Christmas pageant," declares Bob Bradley (John Roberts-Zibbel), Grace’s husband, whose
only wish for Christmas is that he be spared attending.
But the Herdmans’ involvement gets all the church ladies (Rachel Rogel, Karen Walters Elizabeth
Roberts-Zibbel and Tabatha Titus) in a titter. They form a kind of Greek chorus that predicts impending
doom. All this is reflected through the voice of Beth Bradley. As Beth, Terra Sloane does a good job of
showing her character’s shifting attitude toward the Herdmans, from judging their misdeeds as harshly as
the rest to appreciating the big hearts that beat beneath their messy exteriors.
Of course in the end the pageant lives up to the play’s title, and in the end the audience, even if they
saw the play last December, will again welcome back the Herdmans and the rest.
