By Savannah Whaley

While New City Players may be celebrating a bright future with the opening of its 10th season and receipt of the Carbonell Awards’ Jan McArt Award for significant achievement by a small theater, it will be sending audiences back to the past with It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.

With a script adapted by Joe Landry from the classic holiday film about a desperate man’s personal redemption on Christmas eve, the production recalls radio’s golden age. Five captivating actors morph in and out of nearly three dozen characters as they share the stage with sound and foley designer Tyler Johnson Grimes who creates an astonishing array of sound effects including that well-known bell that rings every time an angel gets its wings.  

“Most people are familiar with It’s a Wonderful Life,” said Producing Artistic Director Tim Davis, who also directs the production. “You get to the end of that story and it is a man who has felt like he has lost everything, but he realizes what is most important in his life all along has been his community, and not just his family, but his close circle of friends, and then his larger community outside of that.”

That belief in the value of community isn’t something that New City Players hauls out once a year with the holiday decorations, it is the troupe’s very foundation.

“I think it represents in story format the thing we’ve been getting at with New City Players from day one,” Davis mused.  “We were a group of friends who started a theater company together and we’ve grown that inner circle to include an ensemble of artists, a board of directors, stakeholders, sponsors, and donors who contribute at a high level. We’ve built that to an even wider circle of a community of people who, when they come to our shows, feel like they’re a part of the family.”