This part of the Caravan experience is still great.

The Wonderful is not wonderful.

You can’t beat the venue, but Luke Reece’s script is bad.

A riff on the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wonderful is Caravan Farm Theatre’s winter show. That means it takes place outdoors on a farm near Armstrong in the north Okanagan. Members of the audience hop onto horse-drawn sleighs and glide through the snowy night to watch scenes that unfold on little stages set up in the woods. So far so gorgeous.

The Caravan member who was riding shotgun (keeping watch) on the back of my sleigh was terrific — firm but extremely amiable when he was dealing with a kind of out-of-control little guy who was sitting next to me. And the drivers of the sleighs guided their teams of Percherons into tight spots with incredible precision.

But, as I said, the script sucks. George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart’s character in the movie) becomes Georgia Brathwaite, a young Black woman living in a small BC community. She’s about to commit suicide. To convince Georgia to embrace her life, Terence, this version’s angel, shows her what her little town would have been like if she had never been born.

Not one of Reece’s variations on the suicide/redemption plot works. [Read more…]