STAGE REVIEW : ‘A Christmas Memory’

Although the Mark Taper Forum is bringing back Madeline Puzo’s adaptation of Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” for the eighth year at the Itchey Foot literary cabaret, there is always a new audience for the piece. I had never heard it before (this “Memory” is more heard than seen), and a lot of youngsters--and their parents--at Wednesday’s free matinee at the Taper probably hadn’t either.

They loved it, were even moved by it--the applause and visible handkerchiefs proved as much. Michael Peretzian’s full staging helped. There was a bench and table for Capote’s young boy narrator and his elderly friend to sit at (Michael Tulin and Mary Carver), and a large brown quilted blanket formed a floor and backdrop. This was essentially the staging used for the show’s tour last year to Poland and Czechoslavakia. You won’t see it at the Itchey Foot, where the show will play Dec. 21-23.

Too bad, because the little touches turn “A Christmas Memory” into a play. At the end, for example, when Tulin recalls his eccentric, old friend for the last time, seeing them both as kites in the sky, free in flight yet tenuously connected to the ground, the sky appears at the Taper. At the Itchey Foot the actors must work harder.

Carver’s work is mostly done: She has nearly every nuance of her fruitcake-loving Alabama woman developed to the point that it’s natural, never cartoonish. Tulin is soft around the edges, not quite in touch with the sense of dare in every boy. It’s as if he is already the older Capote, remembering. He has to be both, which is the theatrical trick. David Johnson’s vibraphone music support is like a watercolorist’s brush strokes filling in a simple sketch.

At 801 W. Temple St., Dec. 21-23, 8 p.m. Tickets: $8; (213) 972-7373.