This is Paula Vogel's 23rd play and the first since she won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive. This time, she acknowledges drawing inspiration from the early one-acts of Thornton Wilder, especially The Long Christmas Dinner and The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden (which she read in high school). From the former, which seamlessly covers 90 years in a short period, she avoids strictly linear time; from the latter, she takes a car journey by parents and three children.
In Christmas Ride, the bitter Jewish father and frustrated Catholic mother sit in front while their squabbling kids -- Rebecca, Stephen, and Claire -- ride in the back seat. In a religious compromise, they attend a Unitarian Universalist service, where the kimono-clad minister conveys his obsession with things Japanese, before the family proceeds to a disastrous holiday party at Grandma's house. Vogel has fused American realism with mysterious Asian detachment by having the three children portrayed by large puppets in the Japanese bunraku tradition.
As in bunraku theater, the puppets are operated by people dressed in black with black-hooded veils, who by convention are thus to be regarded as invisible. Offstage to one side, as in bunraku, sits a musician (Sumie Kaneko) who plays the samisen (a kind of three-string banjo), mixing Japanese themes with occasional carols ("Good King Wenceslaus," "Silent Night"). Standing behind the puppets are their live counterparts, who in the second half come downstage in a series of flash-forwards to act out their unfortunate and unhappy futures as adults -- the son recklessly and fatally contracting AIDS (the play is dedicated to Vogel's brother, who died of AIDS). The minister, doubling as a white-garbed spirit, performs a riveting angular death dance, often found in bunraku plays.
Director Eustis has elicited superb performances from his cast, especially from Stephen Thorne as the son. Loy Arcenas has designed an auto in the form of a stylized raked white square, which can be rotated, along with a house front that rolls in when needed, and periodic upstage adornments such as flying kites and paper lanterns. This world premiere is an extraordinarily thought-provoking work, stunningly mounted.
