Magi Re-imagined

Playwright Robert Ruffin has endowed writer O. Henry’s sweet, tart little tale of impoverished and devoted sweethearts with what is, figuratively, the graceful, firm physique of a well conditioned modern dancer.

The original sketch related a very brief story about two young newlyweds giving to each other in a self-sacrificing way that embodied the Christmas spirit. It did so in terms of poignant irony and accessible sentimentality.

The VPT’s one-act piece, running about 90 minutes, perfectly explains how this articulate, bright pair came to be impoverished at Christmastime in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. It wraps O. Henry’s short two-character fable in a carefully imagined plot that lays out their early lives and courtship in the genteel horse country of an older Virginia and places their youthful idealism and love most effectively in the context of a cynical and rapacious urban world.

Besides the back-story of Jim and Della Young, the play adds to O. Henry’s tale an ending with more hopeful, if implicit, promise for the young couple’s financial future. Some appended closing speeches, with which the actors lay out for the audience the morals and meaning of the tale, are not at all at odds with O. Henry’s affection for the gracefully presented self-evident. It is again to Ruffin’s credit and to that of director Stephen Breese, that their show displays no sense of cloying sweetness or of the maudlin. Rather it preserves the original’s feel, but alloys the story’s rather shameless sentiment with sufficient realism to provide resilience and luster.

From the very first words that Della speaks—"One dollar and eighty seven cents," heard in darkness—Ruffin’s script shows, unmistakably but unobtrusively, the hand of a true man of the theater. Its plot and its characters all fit together precisely into a dynamic, neatly functioning structure that seamlessly incorporates and proceeds from O. Henry’s original story.

Bryan Wakefield plays Jim, or James Dillingham Young, an underemployed, then suddenly unemployed, UVA law school graduate.

Amaree Cluff plays sweet, strong spirited wife Della. The rest of the cast is seen in multiple roles. Tamara Johnson is most prominently cast as Mrs. Tyler, young Della’s wealthy guardian and self-styled "aunt." Ed Whitacre shifts neatly through roles that range from street vendor and stable manager to snooty jeweler and prominent New York lawyer. Ron Reid plays Jim’s university mentor, the Shakespeare scholar Professor Tinsdale, and an assortment of less savory characters. All are fully believable, all delineate their separate characters effectively.

Like the acting, the lighting by Lausanne Davis-Carpenter, the set by George Hillow, Kathy Jaremski’s costumes and Bart Fasbender’s sound are what one would expect of a fully professional endeavor.