'Meet Me In St. Louis' Live Radio Play To Be Staged In Southampton

This week, we welcome Thanksgiving and the start of all things holiday. In addition to the annual Parade of Lights and tree lighting at Agawam Park on Saturday, the coming days usher in another annual tradition in Southampton Village: a live radio play offered by Michael Disher and his actors from Center Stage at the Southampton Cultural Center.

In recent years, the Center Stage shows have alternated between “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” two holiday classics that audiences adore, both adapted as radio plays by Connecticut playwright Joe Landry.

But this year, Mr. Disher wanted to try something different.

“Over the past four years, we’ve ping-ponged between those two,” explained Mr. Disher in a recent interview. “I kind of felt that, unless you’re doing a production of the ‘Nutcracker’ and have a turnover of students who perform it, those two shows will wear thin year after year.

“So I called Joe this summer and said, ‘Do you have anything else?’”

Indeed, he did—“Meet Me in St. Louis,” the classic 1944 MGM film featuring songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, including a little ditty called “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

Though it began its life as a film, the story and the music were adapted for the Broadway stage in 1989, and Mr. Landry’s radio play, a commission for the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania, was first presented in 2013.

Unlike his other holiday-themed adaptations, which are produced all over the world, the upcoming Southampton run will be just the third production of “Meet Me in St. Louis: A Live Radio Play” and is the Long Island premiere.

Set in 1903, the play takes a nostalgic look at the early 20th century through the eyes of the Smith family—parents Alonzo and Anna, and their five children—in a yearlong series of vignettes ending with the opening of the World’s Fair in St. Louis in May 1904. Inspired by “The Kensington Stories” by Sally Benson, the 1944 film was directed by Vincente Minnelli and starred Judy Garland, who a year later became Minnelli’s wife.

The musical film was a box office hit, coming, as it did, at a time when the United States was deeply entrenched in World War II, both in Europe and the Pacific, and no doubt lifted the spirits of audiences in need of relief from the news of the day.

Kind of like now, Mr. Disher notes.

“It was one of those big spectacles that said, ‘Let’s make people feel good,’” he said. “I thought, why shouldn’t I do that now? There’s my political thought for the moment. Can we please laugh at something other than the news?”

Mr. Landry’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” is based on the 1989 stage version of the script, which includes additional musical numbers not in the film, as well as a book by Hugh Wheeler.

“It’s a lovely, innocent tale about the Smith family finding life, love and high expectations for the 1904 World’s Fair,” Mr. Disher said. “The father has gotten a promotion and wants to move to New York, which causes a major conflict, as the girls are in love with local boys.

“It’s first-world problems … that was big stuff back then. When you’re in St. Louis, you don’t get out much,” Mr. Disher laughed. “But within that is a really kind of lovely book by Hugh Wheeler amid music and lyrics by Ralph Blane.

“No one knows Blane, and if you ask me to name another show he wrote, I can’t. But this one holds the distinction of including ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’”

Other memorable songs from the play include “The Boy Next Door,” “Skip To My Lou,” “The Trolley Song,” “Meet Me in St. Louis” and, Mr. Disher’s personal favorite, “You’ll Hear a Bell,” which is sung by the mother, Anna Smith. “It’s so beautifully and hauntingly rendered by Michaal Lyn Schepps in our cast,” he said. “There’s such a marked tenderness, you can’t help but fall in love with this show. It’s like a cookie.

“What I found particularly interesting,” Mr. Disher added, “and why I think Joe selected it to radio-ize, if that’s a word, was that in 1946, Lux Radio Theater actually got Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien, who played the youngest sister in the film, to reprise their roles.”

Like the Lux production, this Center Stage version will be set in a 1940s-era radio studio, complete with an old-school sound effects table and a Foley artist who will make the sounds of doors opening and closing, feet walking, glass breaking and silverware clanking.

“What I love is it forces you to use your imagination,” he said.

When asked if producing a radio play is less complicated than staging more traditional productions, Mr. Disher admitted that while blocking is easier, it still has to be authentic. The complication in this show is that it calls for dancing. Which is why he has brought in Alyssa Kelly, a dancer who has appeared in previous Center Stage productions, to choreograph the footwork.

“It’s terrific. There is a little suspension of disbelief with dancing on the radio. But I do have someone holding microphones to the dancer’s feet,” Mr. Disher said.

It’s all in a day’s work. Devising creative solutions to present a normally visual story as an audio-specific radio play is half the fun—and by its very nature invites audiences to join in as participants.

“Doing it as a radio play is a way to add these richer layers to the story by condensing it,” explained Mr. Landry in a phone interview from Connecticut. “It’s a re-imagining and a hybrid of at least two different forms—the radio and a stage play.

“It’s the theater of the imagination—it really does tap into you,” he said. “You’re more of a participant and using your imagination to fill in things, as you do when reading a book. It’s immersive in a psychological way.”

The production is also a throwback in that it’s set in an old-fashioned radio studio. While the setting evokes a level of nostalgia in audiences today, the fact that the story itself is set four decades earlier recognizes the longing of mid-century audiences for simpler times of their own in the midst of yet another world war.

“The film itself is nostalgic. It’s very inside the looking glass, and there are all these different nostalgia levels,” Mr. Landry said. “This came out in the ’40s, when they were nostalgic for the turn of the century. It’s a very heartwarming and tender story and, like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ has the message that there’s no place like home.

“I’ve always had an affinity for the MGM musical, and this is one of the classics,” he added. “It’s escapism. A nostalgic treat like this is something that I think we could always use—whether during the holidays or any other time of year.”

Despite their five-year professional relationship, Mr. Disher and Mr. Landry have never met. But that will soon change—Mr. Landry is traveling to Southampton to attend the opening-night performance of “Meet Me in St. Louis” on Friday, November 23, at 7 p.m. A brief talkback with the audience will follow the performance.

The cast includes Michael Casper, Gabriel DiFrancesco, David Elliot, Joey Giovingo, Amanda Jones, Alyssa Kelly, John Lovett, Katrina Lovett, Catherine Maloney, Pamela Morris, Robert Nelson, Michaal Lyn Schepps, Anna Schiavoni, Lon Shomer and Edna Winston.

Joe Landry’s “Meet Me in St. Louis: A Live Radio Play,” directed by Michael Disher, runs November 23 through December 9 in Southampton Cultural Center’s Levitas Center for the Arts, 25 Pond Lane, Southampton. Performance times are Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Note: There will be no performance on November 24 due to the village’s annual tree lighting ceremony. Tickets are $25, or $12 for students. A $69 dinner-and-theater special is available at The Plaza Café and Claude’s at the Southampton Inn. A $45 brunch-and-theater special ($32 for students under 21) is available at Fellingham’s for Sunday performances. To purchase tickets, visit scc-arts.org, or call 631-287-4377.