A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE MUSICAL at Fox Theater Review

A scene from A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE MUSICAL. Photo by Gary Emord Netzley. Courtesy of the Fabulous Fox

– By Cate Marquis –

The delightful “A Christmas Story” musical makes an all-too-brief stop at the Fabulous Fox for one weekend only, Dec. 12-14. This show is wonderful fun for all, based on the perennial favorite movie “A Christmas Story” recounting droll kid world memories of one particular Christmas in a small town in Ohio in 1940. Part of the delight of this musical version, like the movie, is that is full of childhood memories of crazy schoolyard dares, sibling stuff, and that one toy you just have to have for Christmas, and free of cloying sentimentality, by instead focusing on humor and a child’s eye view of the world. I double-dog dare you not to like this comic charmer!

All the treats of the original film are here – the Old Man’s battles with the Bumpus hounds and his creative cussin’ (sanitized in the show, of course, as in the film), a boy’s dreams of the perfect Christmas gift, while dodging the neighborhood bully (who might grow up to be a Mafia enforcer or maybe a captain of industry), plus a lamp in the shape of a leg, a pink bunny suit, and a tongue frozen to the school flagpole.

While this show is a musical, it follows the beloved movie fairly closely, but with the addition of a few songs and song-and-dance numbers, in just the right amount. The music fits the crazy kid-centric world and humor, and there are not so many production numbers that the original story gets lost or bogged down.

Th story open with a lone adult on stage, a man doing a radio broadcast, Jean Shepherd (an excellent Mark Stoddard) who begins to reminisce about a particularly eventful family Christmas in 1940, in the small town in Ohio where the then-little Ralphie Parker (Torben Mularski) lived with his mother (Kirsten Bleu Kaiser) and his dad, the Old Man (Gregory White), and younger brother Randy (Mason Burnham). The tale takes place in 1940, the tail end of the Great Depression when family are long used to scraping by, and before the U.S. enter WWII, but this Christmas tale is memorable not for sweetness but it’s madcap kid-centric humor as everything seems to go wrong for Ralphie.

Ralphie is dreaming of getting a BB gun for Christmas. Not just any BB gun but an official Red Ryder® Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. He longs for this toy gun more than anything else – even though every adult tells him he’ll “shoot his eye out” with it. But Ralphie has to have it and will do anything and everything to get that Red Ryder BB gun, so he can fulfill his cowboy hero dreams. But how to persuade his parents?

The bigger musical numbers add some extra fun, and since they mostly depict Ralphie’s daydreams, they fit right in. Mostly the feature the kids and some excellent tap dancing, particularly one where Ralphie finds himself in a 1920s speakeasy, where his teacher Miss Shields (Kristen Greve) is transformed into a tap-dancing chanteuse, backed by kid dancers, and accompanied by one especially talented boy dancing solo on a tabletop. Another standout song-dance number has Ralphie daydreaming about being the cowboy hero of a Western, decked out in white fuzzy chaps, white cowboy hat and armed with his trusty rifle, coming to the rescue of those in distress.

The sets are well-done and fairly elaborate for show that only runs a few days. Most of the action takes place on and around a two-level set of the interior of the family house, with screens, fences, windows and props, notably the front portion of a 1940s car, rounding out the sets.

Torben Mularski, who hails from Barrington, IL, is terrific as Ralphie, and all the more impressive since this show is his professional debut. All the cast are great, but standouts include Mark Stoddard as the droll narrator, Gregory White as the Old Man, Saajab Lakhani and Luke Diaco as Ralphie’s always-arguing best friends Schwartz and Flick, and Kristen Greve as teacher Miss Shields.

The charm of the story is all the other things that go on, while Ralphie is singularly focused on his task, and the musical captures all that fun and the quirky characters of the original film in it’s return to a world through a kids’ eyes.

“A Christmas Story” musical is on stage at the Fabulous Fox through Dec. 14, 2025.

© Cate Marquis