With the unusually warm weather around at the moment, it’s very easy to forget that Christmas is little over a month away, but two hours in the company of the cast of Miracle on 34th Street will soon have you heading home to put the tree up and start cooking mince pies!
Starting with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, a flag waving, all-singing, all-dancing spectacle, the show tells the story of Kris Kringle, who is hired to be Macy’s Santa, which is an easy job as, of course, Kris is indeed the real Santa.
Claire Hawkins plays Doris Walker, the executive who hires Santa and Hannah Thompson plays her precocious daughter, Susan – a young lady who has inherited her mother’s scepticism and who refuses to believe that Santa is real. Both play their roles really well, with occasional glimpses of vulnerability shining through the cracks in their hardened exteriors.
Fred Gaily, an ex US marine played by Carl Lindquist, is the man who takes both Doris and Susan on their journey and who, in the second half, is responsible for trying to prove, in a Court of Law, that Santa is indeed very real.
Special mention has to go to Brendan Matthew as the incredibly camp Marketing Executive Marvin Shellhammer and to Michael Adams who plays R H Macy, the owner of the largest department store in New York.
The star of the show, without doubt, is Danny Lane who, despite being just 21 years old, is totally convincing as the grey haired and bushy bearded Kris Kringle. He conveys brilliantly, Kringle’s positive attitude and optimism throughout the show and, should the existence of Santa ever really be in doubt, he would be highly likely to convince even the most hardened minds – just as he does in the show.
Although sometimes a little frantic, and with a couple of scenes that are not as necessary as others, this production took the whole audience well away from the warm but windy streets of Tunbridge Wells and made us all feel that it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
**** Four Stars
