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A Critique of The Long Christmas Ride Home

By Robert Rawls

The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel opens with a slow procession down the isles to the stage that then builds to a cacophony of Christmas carols being sung with various emotions fighting for dominance and quickly ends with the actors leaving the stage. Then two headlights and the sound of what is later to be described as chain clad tires bring us into the plot. A man (Mark McManus) and a woman (Ami Salee) come out and begin narrating in calm, some what detached manner. As they describe the scene in the care, stagehands come out dressed in all black indicating that they should be ignored per standard convention, and puppet the garb of the parents and puppets that comprise the three children. As we are drawn into the car and life of these characters, the man and woman grow more involved in their narration till they assume the roles of the mother and father in the car. Gradually throughout the play, the puppeteers of the children become the voice, face and finally the characters completely. This process is a representation of how the audience is being bought into the lives of the characters we see them more as real people and less as characters being acted on a stage.

The staging of the play helps with presenting a temporary states of the characters lives that we are presented within the play. A minimalist set primarily consisting of three staged screens set mid and down stage, two rolling stools, and one rolling bench. The screens serve as shifting background with back projections allowing those backgrounds to change with the scene as soon as a scene changes. The bench transforms thought out the play from the back of the car, to church pews, to a table, and back to the back of the car byt the end. The stools are used in much the same way.