Shereen Ahmed, who has the face of a pensive angel, sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” just about as well as anyone who’s ever passed along the fervent holiday wish. She does it as Esther Smith in The Irish Repertory Theatre’s streaming Meet Me in St. Louis production, as directed by Charlotte Moore. The made-for-online treatment of the fave December treat is an adaptation of Sally Benson’s stories as lifted from the pages of The New Yorker and unfurled to the world in the 1944 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie.
More directly, Moore has adapted her 2006 Irish Rep version into an economy-sized take that apparently necessitates eliminating all but the most parsimonious dancing. When actors taped in far-flung locales are superimposed on designer Charlie Corcoran’s colorful backdrops of the Smith family’s comfortable Victorian home, it’s well-nigh impossible for them to get their arms around each other. Editor Meridith Sommers does manage to present a credible lips-to-lips kiss along the way.
The IRT’s Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly have been pandemic-theater pioneers in the last several months with successful, somewhat sophisticated treatments of Conor McPherson’s The Weir and Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet. Moore isn’t quite so deft at bringing Meet Me in St. Louis to the streaming screen.
It may be that O’Neill and McPherson keep their plays confined to pressure-cooker surroundings, whereas—although much of Benson’s activity takes place where the Smiths reside—musicals require a more expansive MGM-like atmosphere. For instance, Esther’s trolley ride, where she’s joined by boy-next-door John Truitt (Max Von Essen), is kinda cramped; and the rowdy ballroom scene, where Esther is saddled with a dance card of losers, is sadly underpopulated.
That’s not the only wrinkle in this current 1904 fabric. More than a modicum of the problem is the playing. It’s a drawback not encountered in the company’s previous online outings: Because the actors are performing in a stage vacuum, they are not able to react to their fellow players as they would were they not positioned at this brand of social distance. Under Moore’s guidance, they’re doing their takes cold.
And not doing them especially well in clothes too often lacking period authenticity. Often the actors—among them Rufus Collins, Kathy Fitzgerald, William Bellamy, Jay Aubrey Jones—let fly over-played takes they would avoid in other circumstances. One result is that, as written and performed, Ahmed’s Esther and older sister Rose (Ali Ewoldt) come across as little more than self-impressed. Their frequent behavior might lead onlookers to decide this pair of swanning princesses don’t deserve the eager fellows courting them. As little sis Tootie, the possessor of an unusual morbid streak (she’s constantly burying her dolls), Kylie Kuioka is supposed to be melodramatically cute. She often is, though denied the straw-hat party strut with Esther that film fans adore.
Speaking of the songs, the Ralph Blane-Hugh Martin score is intact, as nicely conducted by John Bell with Josh Clayton’s orchestrations for a six-piece ensemble. Though the brood’s mother, Anna Smith, only sings a brief piano ditty in the movie, here she’s the always excellent Melissa Errico and thereby handed “You’ll Hear a Bell,” which Martin and Blane added to their song list for the short-lived 1989 Broadway knock-off. (Moore was Mother Smith in that cast.) “Touch of the Irish” originated then, too, and so did “Wasn’t it Fun?” another cheer-up number Errico and Collins intone as the happily married Smiths.
One reviewer’s longtime quarrel with Benson and her adapters: The Smiths, faced in the plot’s one conflict with having to quit their beloved St. Louis for New York City just as the fabbo fair is about to get underway, utter some bruising NYC putdowns. This is the one area that New Yorkers may consider a blemish on the seasonal A-lister.
By the way, Ahmed’s lush take on “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is a reminder that the 1940s were a terrific decade for new Yuletide standards. In addition to the Blane-Martin staple, there are, most prominently, Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” written in 1938 but introduced in 1942’s Holiday Inn, and Johnny Marks’ 1949 “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Those are hard-to-top Christmas presents.
As for the Irish Rep’s Meet Me in St. Louis, it’s far from a lump of Christmas coal and more like an okay stocking-stuffer.
