It was a "Gift of Christmas" doubled. One evening this week the staff and cast of Promised Valley Playhouse opened their doors to battered women and their children, and clients and workers from aging services, Welfare Square and Deseret Industries.
Greeting guests in the lobby of the playhouse were Elder Harold G. Hillam, of the presidency of the Council of the Seventy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with his wife, Carol, and Murray Rawson, manager of PVP.Elder Hillam said, "One of my responsibilities is the playhouse, and we've looked forward to coming and being involved here."
"We are to furnish entertainment for everyone in Salt Lake," said Rawson. And by opening the dress rehearsal to its special guests, many Salt Lakers got a taste of the Christmas spirit that they might not have had the opportunity to do otherwise.
Clients of the Salt Lake County Senior Center, a division of the Salt Lake County Aging Services, came to the show. Also invited were women and their families from the YWCA Women in Jeopardy program and also families from Marillac House, the Catholic Community Services shelter for battered women and their children. Workers from Welfare Square and Deseret Industries were in attendance as well.
Employees and staff from the American Cancer Society, the American Red Cross and the Community Services Council were invited. Wasatch Valley Re-ha-bili-ta-tion clients and staff attended, as did family and friends of cast members.
Russian exchange student Olga Plyaskina was able to attend because her family is related to the play's writer-director, Randy Boothe.
Members of the audience applauded each song enthusiastically and especially seemed to enjoy a skating scene with a gigantic dancing snowman and Santa's workshop, with a bevy of brightly clad elves who danced with the toys.
"A Gift of Christmas" is beginning its sixth year of production and for the first time went on without star Robert Peterson, who was felled by a wicked case of the flu. Tuesday night was the first performance Peterson has missed. Boothe stepped into the key role of the Bethlehem innkeeper who is introduced to the modern Christmas traditions through scenes from "The Nutcracker" and "A Christmas Carol." Boothe came onstage before the production and explained why he would be carrying a script that night. Since he had only known since 3 p.m. that he would be going on for Peterson, he said he just hadn't had quite enough time to memorize his lines. "They volunteered me that I would come onstage and be Robert Peterson. Well, that's impossible. But I'll do my best to guide you through this play," he said.
In an interview during intermission, producer Janielle Chris-ten-sen said that three of the children in the cast had been running fevers the night before but, like little troupers, were making sure the show went on. "This is the magic of live theater. You just deal with it. The audience gets behind the cast."
But regardless of handicaps or dire circumstances among the cast and the audience, the spirit of the Christmas season filled the theater.