Fruitcake Weather

[fajrdrako]

Tonight I went to see Fruitcake Weather, probably the best Christmas show I have ever seen. It's on at the Ottawa Little Theatre but it isn't an OLT show. It's being staged by the Fruitcake Co-op, a new group of professional actors.

Okay, it helps that in the first place I love Christmas so much that I enjoy Christmas shows.

But in this case... they had such a wonderful combination of material. Some of it was new and original, like Paul Rainville's In My Father's Footsteps, and On the Day After Boxing Day by Paul Cookson - a wonderful piece about Santa Claus' holiday in the sunny Mediterranean. The significant story in Act One was Fruitcake Weather by Truman Capote, which I'd never read or heard before - a delightful story, presumably autobiographical, about a boy's Christmases with his best friend - sixty years older than he was.

Then there was the material that was utterly familiar to me because they picked some of my favourite Christmas things - my favourite Christmas song, In the Bleak Midwinter, with words by Christina Rossetti and music by Gustav Holst; and one of my favourite poems since I was about three years old, King John's Christmas by A.A. Milne:

And oh, Father Christmas, if you love me at all
Bring me a big red india-rubber ball.

There was even a reading of The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe, and Little Tree by e.e. cummings, and the Christmas story as told by St. Luke - I do enjoy readings of the King James Bible in non-religious contexts; it's such beautiful language.

And there was more, much more - even though the show wasn't long. I'm so glad I went.