Through squabbles and antics, Riverwalk show uplifts

The best Christmas pageant ever? No, but it’s maybe the most entertaining one I’ve ever seen.

“Christmas Belles,” running Thursday (Dec. 14) through Sunday (Dec. 17) at the Riverwalk Theatre, offers a cast of Southern-fried characters who captivate the audience with a seemingly endless flow of jibs, jabs, quibbles and squabbles that leave no one untouched in the three weeks leading up to Christmas Eve.

The story evolves in a series of vignettes, sometimes with snippets of Christmas songs between changes in scenes and settings. The staging and transitions are effective, like reading a book with short chapters. I especially love the recurring little wagon, laden with wrapped gifts and pulled by Raynerd Chisum (Tim Edinger), who repeatedly says, “I just love Christmas.”

During intermission, the only complaint I overheard, several times, was difficulty hearing some of the spoken gag lines, perhaps because of the Southern accents.

We first meet Frankie Futrelle Dubberly (Debbie Lundeen), who’s nine months pregnant with twins, and her husband, Dub Dubberly (Charles Hoogstraten), who frets about passing a kidney stone and whether he can support another two children. A seasonal Santa with a kidney stone and a part in the pageant? Watch out!

Frankie and her sisters, Honey Raye (Linda Widener) and Twink (Holly Kay-Cannon) Futrelle, are attempting to stage the annual Christmas pageant at the Tabernacle of the Lamb church in the fictional town of Fayro, Texas. Honey Raye has some ideas for making this pageant better than any directed by Miss Geneva Musgrave (Teresa Hurd) over the last 27 years. Twink has been in jail for alleged arson, but she’s freed to lend a hand, sometimes cuffed, in the preparations.

Can you imagine a biting sheep, a polar bear, Elvis and four wise men led by a camel in the Christmas story? Miss Geneva, for better or worse, still has some ideas of her own for salvaging the pageant. Take it or leave it, Honey Raye!

Alas, there’s mutiny among the pageant cast, and whatever can go awry in their rehearsals goes awry. Moments of laughter may give way to loud guffaws, especially in act two.

Things get even worse on Christmas Eve. The ill-fated pageant opens with Mary sitting all alone with Baby Jesus, wondering why Joseph isn’t there. Joseph may have been was busy with his daytime jobs, the pastor of the church and one of Santa’s reindeer.

Patsy Price (Julie Franklin), who fancies herself the star of past pageants, takes to the ambo in glittering raiment for a serious reading of the Christmas story, which goes fairly well until she stumbles over the name Caesar Augustus. Pain pills have side effects, you know.

But then there’s the real telling of the Christmas story, a narration coming from the least expected source.

From start to finish, this is an uplifting evening of love and laughter. Like Chisum, you’ll be telling yourself and others, “I just love Christmas.”