←Recommendations of My Kind Of Christmas

11/29/2024. To say that I had the pleasure of seeing MY KIND OF CHRISTMAS with Palos Village Players would be an understatement. This wonderful play by Dana Hall is heartwarming and funny, and it is destined to become a holiday classic.

Christmas changes at different stages of our life and Hall provides some cheer to figure out how to meld old traditions with new. The twists of farce and poignancy are combined in a rare holiday treat of belly laughs and the tug of heartstrings. Carollers, ghosts and ugly Christmas sweaters deck these halls and gives the play a merry jingle. It’s a Christmas confection for all.

This piece has everything one would want in a Christmas play. A family story--empty nesters finding it difficult facing their first holiday without their children--that many people will relate to. Grown children who still relate to each other like they did as children. Rediscovery of the joy of the season thanks to a little ghostly intervention. The characters, major and minor, are uniformly wonderful. There are comedic moments, and probably toward the end some the audience members will be reaching for their handkerchiefs. It's Christmas magic indeed and ideally should make its way into the seasonal repertoire.

The holiday season often brings joy. But for some, it carries a weight of loss and loneliness and the reality that time changes our lives whether we like it or not. This play is simply marvelous. What Dana Hall has done with this piece is show a kind of glimpse into what is and what can be if we accept that our time on this earth is just as precious as the people we choose to live it with. It’s beautiful. It’s lovely. It’s Christmas as it should be.

I have always said the main purpose of a Christmas story in any form is that its meant to have warm and fuzzy moments a plenty (#diehardisnotachristmasmovie). Well Dana offers that here in SPADES as well as so much more. Its hard to imagine a person losing their Christmas spirit but David certainly has. That's where this magical and mystical story starts before taking the audience through a heartfelt and humorous journey to discover...well I'm not going to tell you! You have to read it yourself, or better yet, produce it as a great alternative at this festive time!

This is certainly MY KIND OF CHRISTMAS play! Or any holiday. The warmth that emanates from the script is enough to melt the heart of even the most hardened Grinch. Dana Hall even manages to give a nod to that classic tale along with that other one with ghostly encounters. But it’s the relationships of the Smith family and the lessons they impart that are the core of this story. Learn from the past, live in the present with hope for the future. Beautifully done.

The battle every writer faces when creating a holiday play is: How do I write something that hasn't been done before and doesn't feel schlocky and manages to be a worthwhile work of art? To this writer, I say: look no further than Dana Hall's MY KIND OF CHRISTMAS! Dana is exactly the kind of writer up to this task, filling the pages with her trademark dry sense of humor, unabashed joy, and some unexpectedly pointed familial existentialism especially the commentary on the nature of traditions evolving. Highly recommended to become the newest perennial holiday favorite!