A Warm Feeling From ‘Snow Child’

The Serendipity Theatre Company’s gentle play “The Snow Child,” at the Coronet Theatre, is filled with genuine warmth and tenderness, despite a lack of depth in the mostly child cast.

Based on a Russian folk tale about a childless couple who yearn for a daughter, Scott Davidson’s sensitive adaptation is as much a celebration of love between husband and wife (played by the cast’s only adults and professionals, Katy Henk and Denys Gawronski) as it is about the bond between mother and child.

The couple’s wishes for the New Year bring husband Dimitri’s snow sculpture of a little girl to life; being loved and learning to love makes the Snow Child human. There’s enough humor to lighten sad moments. Gawronski tickles the audience with his comic demonstration of the different kinds of children he sees in his toyshop: bold, shy, greedy, whiners and naggers. And the sentiment avoids the maudlin.

Staged with clarity by director Jenny Ericks, the cast’s line-readings, including those of Gawronski and Henk, skate the surface pretty much, but the feeling comes through. One lovely scene has the Snow Child (Corinne Braun), who cannot enter the house or she’ll melt, shyly sweeping and dusting outside as her mother Katya does the same inside. Braun’s soft, sweet manner is endearing throughout.

Rounding out the rest of the child cast are Catalina Hayes Bautista, Rhani Remedes, Jesse Sage Noonan, Nicholas Cowan and 5-year-old Lora Rachel Davidson.

Ellis Pryce-Jones designed the pretty snowy set, complemented by Ken Realista’s lighting; costumes by Artis Malvert Williams enhance time and place.

“Snow Child,” Coronet Theatre, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., Friday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 1 and 4 p.m. Ends Jan. 5. $12 ($6 for ages 13 and under); (213) 652-9199).

Goodby, Columbus: Was Christopher Columbus “a good man, a bad man, or both?”

With that introductory nod to current controversy, Joyce Moller launches into her solo storytelling performance of “Christopher Columbus, Adventurer” at the Tracy Roberts Theatre.

It’s a contradictory performance--and a very short one at 30 minutes. Moller, dressed in a long calico apron dress, her small face dominated by huge eyeglasses that frequently slip down her nose, both reads and tells a sympathetic, simple chronicle of the Italian explorer’s youthful aspirations, culminating in his first successful voyage to the American continent.

Moller’s Columbus is an ambitious, boyish dreamer, so overjoyed to receive the royal go-ahead to his plans that he agrees without thought to the strictures that he bring back treasure and “Christianize” everyone he meets.

Moller ends with a recitation of the ways in which the “beautiful, wise” natives of Northern America helped Columbus and his sailors. She notes that later, finding no treasure, he would take some of the “beautiful” natives back to Spain to be slaves--but that for now, he was just happy to be “Christopher Columbus, Adventurer!”

But Moller’s enthusiastic manner seems forced and aimed at the youngest in the audience. Her “Wave farewell, children!” is an order, not a request; her brusque invitation for children to come up on stage and touch Italy on the globe is intimidating.

During the show, Moller does best when she is not reading from her book, but she panders with contemporary slang--”awesome,” “now dig this,” “then everything turned yucky,” he was “freaking out,” etc.--that may briefly amuse, but undermines any real involvement in her subject.

Interestingly, Moller is at her most involving and accessible before she starts, when she tells of how her grandmother, a fascinating storyteller, inspired her to spin tales of her own.

“Christopher Columbus, Adventurer,” Tracy Roberts Theatre, 141 S. Robertson Blvd., Sunday, 2 p.m., through next Saturday. $10; (213) 660-8587). Running time: 30 minutes.