RELIGION / JOHN DART : Musical Comedy About Nativity Debuts at Glendale Presbyterian

Does the story of Jesus’ birth, the biblical foundation for religious Christmas observances, lend itself to musical comedy?

Glendale Presbyterian Church thinks so.

Mary, Joseph and other biblical figures, depicted in a contemporary setting, debuted Friday night in the first of five performances in the church sanctuary of a gag-filled production called “In Those Days.”

But only after a few people in the 1,100-member congregation expressed worries that a musical comedy about the Nativity “was going to cheapen the sacred story,” said the Rev. Darrell Johnson, senior pastor.

“Their concerns were valid. Some people wonder how humor and the sacred can go together,” Johnson said. “But I think they understand now that this will help us appreciate the power (of the Christmas story) all the more.”

The pastor praised the author, church member Dean Batali, who is also directing the play, for giving new life to biblical lines so familiar to Christians.

“Through humor, we hear them in a new way,” Johnson said.

In Batali’s script, Mary, thinking about wedding arrangements when the lyre-bearing angel Gabriel appears before her, asks him whether he’s available to play the harp at her wedding before the angel gets a chance to tell her she’s about to become pregnant with the messiah.

Mary, played by church member Brenna Meredith, later goes for a prenatal checkup at a doctor’s office where the nurse misunderstands how she learned from Gabriel that she would have a baby.

NURSE: Doctor Gabriel. I don’t believe I’ve heard of him. Does he have an office around here?

MARY: He makes house calls.

NURSE: All right. What did he say to you?

MARY: He started out by saying, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you.’

NURSE: Well, he has quite a bedside manner.

The script turns the Gospel of Luke’s story of Zechariah, the temporarily voiceless father-to-be of John the Baptist, into a device for several sight gags, making Zechariah hold up signs to be understood. Trouble is, his spelling is comically atrocious.

The border guard at Bethlehem, stopping Joseph and Mary, heavy with child, at the city’s edge, asks, “You got any citrus fruits or house plants?”

Humor has not been absent from Christmas season plays put on each year by Glendale Presbyterian.

Last year, “A Town Without a Tale,” about a medieval town that hadn’t heard the Christmas story for 300 years, contained humor, Johnson said. About 1,400 people attended that play’s three performances.

This year’s production, which includes 13 traditional and original songs, had previously been tested at churches. Batali said a few years ago a Christian theatrical company did a smaller version of his play at about 30 churches of various denominations in the Pacific Northwest.

“That was the four-person version and with fewer songs,” said Batali, who works as a staff assistant on the NBC sitcom “Madman of the People.”

Preparations and rehearsals for “In Those Days” have consumed about 200 hours since the start of autumn, said the senior pastor.

“I know, because my sixth-grade daughter has several minor roles, including one as a sheep,” Johnson said.

*

“In Those Days” will be staged 7:30 tonight, Sunday and Dec. 9 and 10 as well as at 4 p.m. Dec. 11. Tickets are $5, available at the door or by mail from the church at 125 S. Louise St., Glendale. For more information, call (818) 242-8873.