Photo Credit: Melinda Rhodebeck
The Sanders Family returns to the Acacia Theatre stage, entertaining audiences in Sanders Family Christmas, with a countrified gospel mix of recognizable hymns, secular favorites and good ol’ fashioned Southern charm. It’s all part of the family’s “Christmas Eve Sing” at the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church circa 1941 as snow swirls and World War II rages on around the globe.
Sanders Family Christmas follows Smoke on the Mountain, which Acacia staged in 2010. Part of this production’s built-in familiarity is seeing some the same actors reprising their roles: Elaine Wyler (Vera Sanders), David Sapiro (her husband, Burl) and Filippo Carini (Burl’s brother, Stanley). The Sanders twins, Denise (played by Abbey Pitchford) and Dennis (played by Zack Horne), are now young adults, with Dennis shipping off to the U.S. Marine Corps.
Acacia produces theater with a Christian-based perspective, and nowhere is this more evident than with this show. Scripture gets spouted about as often as the snow flies in a blizzard, and Connie Ray’s writing gets across the serious moments interspersed with plenty of humor. Witness the comical, rapid-fire competition between the determined Vera and the sweet, bumbling pastor Mervin Oglethorpe (a perfectly cast David Duncan III) as they each try to outdo one another, hurling verse after verse. Hilarious.
Speaking of “witnessing,” each of the Sanders family members take their turns, and the most riveting scene in this two-hour production (with 15-minute intermission) is watching Sapiro tell his story of being drafted and going to fight “over there.” He reenacts his military encounters with such a seductive intensity that we are with him, trapped in the dark, with the enemy drawing closer.
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And then there’s all that music! Thirty songs total, with the cast performing on all manner of instruments, banjo to washboard. Sanders Family Christmas is truly a homespun hit for the holidays.
Through Dec. 2 at Concordia University’s Todd Wehr Auditorium, 12800 N. Lake Shore Drive. For tickets, call 414-744-5995 or visit acaciatheatre.com.
