Island Stage Left presents Christmas Memories

Holiday-themed performances on the island continue this week with the opening of a production from Island Stage Left, which sends along details about its latest show — and a look at what’s up next.

Island Stage Left theatre company presents two holiday shows this year, each featuring a single actor. Daniel Mayes performs his ever-popular Christmas Memories, based on the Welsh childhood of Dylan Thomas, on Dec. 17, 19, 20 and 21. Then Broadway actor Allen Fitzpatrick will bring to life Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on Dec. 23 and 24.

“In these one-man shows, Dan and Allen have to create many different characters,” says ISL artistic director Helen Machin-Smith. “They have to make scenes appear in the audience’s imagination, they have to sing, to tell the story, to evoke fear and laughter and nostalgia.” Helen is the stage director for Christmas Memories.

“It’s the essence of theatre,” she adds, “which is that actors are their own instruments, in the way that a harp or a piano is a musician’s instrument.”

Christmas Memories opens this Saturday. In it, Daniel Mayes takes the audience to a small town in Wales, a hundred years ago — the childhood home of the poet Dylan Thomas.

“Come closer,” he says. “You can hear the snow falling, and the hushed town breathing. And you alone can hear the invisible starfall.” The stories are lush with Thomas’s near-magical images, which, as often as not, swerve unexpectedly into a joke. Mayes conjures up the whole town, from young boys snowballing the neighborhood cats, to an old ghost of a man with “a small, dry, eggshell voice” who frightens the boys out of their wits.

Mayes weaves an enchanting story, by turns funny and romantic. This year, Laura Concord, who performed in the show when it first premiered, returns to sing the tunes of the town’s women — from the lonely wife longing for her husband, far away in the World War I trenches, to the tipsy aunt serenading the stars in the dark yard.

Admission to Christmas Memories is free, but donations are gratefully accepted. Masks are strongly encouraged. The shows take place in the Marie Boe Building at the San Juan County Fairgrounds — 849 Argyle Ave. — and start at 7 p.m. Seating is limited and reservations are not available, so arriving early is recommended.

For wheelchair access or other arrangements, or to reserve seats for A Christmas Carol, email Island Stage Left.

You can support the San Juan Update by doing business with our loyal advertisers, and by making a one-time contribution or a recurring donation.