When Dominic Missimi, associate professor of theater at Northwestern University, heard about a musical called “The Christmas Schooner,” he says he went, “Wow.” “Since we started the music theater program a couple of years ago we’ve been doing the great classic musicals like “My Fair Lady” and “Oklahoma,” but I thought we should get engaged with doing new works,” he says. “And also it’s very rare to find something that kids and adults will like.”
“The Christmas Schooner” fits that bill perfectly. The musical, written by Northwestern alumnus John Reeger with music and lyrics by Chicagoan Julie Shannon, will be given its premiere at Northwestern this weekend. The story and songs are meant to appeal to young people and to their parents and grandparents, with characters in the play also spanning the three generations.
Reeger’s story is based on Chicago’s maritime history. “From the late 1800s through 1912 schooners brought Christmas trees from the Upper Peninsula for Germans and other immigrants waiting on the docks of the Clark Street Harbor,” explains Missimi. “Reeger imagined what that first journey of the schooner was like, and he created a fictitious story based on fact about a German family living in Michigan that brings Christmas trees to Chicago for the first time.”
The musical has nine principle actors and a chorus of 10 who act as storytellers. The music ranges from folk songs to standard musical theater pieces and complex choral work.
Missimi thinks there are many aspects of the play that will appeal to youngsters. It takes place on a large wooden set that is half wharf, half ship with pulleys and a sail, and Missimi says, “I think children will like the spirit of being out in the sea with the wind effects and the sounds of being on a boat and the fog.”
Also important for children in the audience is the fact that the play has a young protagonist. Karl, the son in the German family that brings the Christmas trees to Chicago, is played by 10-year-old Stephen Schellhardt. Missimi says, “The play is about a rite of passage of a young kid growing up with the old European traditions and the new American traditions.”
Karl sings several songs, including “What Loving Sons Are For.” “The boy bends over backwards to help his mother with 5 million Christmas chores because he wants to be in the good graces of St. Nick,” says Missimi. The boy also sings a song called “That’s America.” Explains Missimi, “His grandpa likes anything that is German and nothing that is American and his mother says that Karl must talk and act like an American, but the boy says they can have both, that America is the best of the old and the new.”
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“The Christmas Schooner,” 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Thursday, and Nov. 13, 19 and 20; 2 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 14 and 21, Ethel M. Barber Theatre, 1979 Campus South Drive on Northwestern University’s Evanston Campus, $20, $16 for seniors, $9 for students; 708-491-7282.
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