‘Mim’ Gives Mary’s View of Nativity

She’s just 16 and pregnant. Soon, everyone in her small town will know. She needs help, but she’s not sure how to break the news to anyone. How does she tell her betrothed, who adores her, that the child is not his? How does she explain her condition to her tradition-bound parents?

She could be one of many teenagers, but in the musical “Mim,” she happens to be Mary, the soon-to-be mother of Jesus Christ.

Rethinking the Nativity from her vulnerable position is a thought-provoking idea, and for the most part, this show--with a book by Stephen H. Gariepy and music and lyrics by Ronald H. Owen--follows through on that promise. Yet even under the best of circumstances, this would be a musical that catches fire only intermittently, and its West Coast premiere did not come under the best of circumstances.

Its four weekend performances, which ended Sunday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, were to have been a presentation of the Music Theatre of Southern California. Late last month, however, that group announced it was ceasing operations. M. Roger Lockie, one of the group’s founders and music director at the time of its demise, moved ahead with his own co-production.

Though not up to Music Theatre’s old standards, the presentation offered some transcendent moments, thanks mostly to Devon Jackson’s and Paul Green’s performances as Mary and her intended, Joseph. Both young--she willowy, he wiry--they truly resembled a pair of defenseless teens. When she asked, “Can a child bear a child?” you had to admit that their chances looked grim.

Yet hope lurked in the simple surety of Mary’s belief, evoked in the pure soprano that Jackson sent floating into the night as she accepted God’s challenge. Using his sturdy baritone to good effect, Green conveyed Joseph’s surging sense of betrayal, even as tears revealed his still-tender feelings for Mary.

The other non-Equity performers proved uneven. Though most were fine singers, they tended to be unseasoned and unconvincing as actors. And pauses for set changes at Saturday’s matinee tended to interrupt whatever flow director George Strattan--along with Lockie, sensitively conducting the pit orchestra--managed to build during the scenes.

The fraying edges tended to reveal other flaws, such as the show’s liberal borrowings from “Fiddler on the Roof,” much of the Andrew Lloyd Webber canon and, especially, “Les Miserables.” This last show was most strongly evoked whenever Joseph’s hotheaded buddy Ephraim (Victor Chan) took center stage to try to whip his fellow Nazarenes into revolt against the oppressive Romans.

“Mim” was advertised as “a new holiday classic,” a rather silly oxymoron. Yet, flaws and all, it might have the makings of a Christmas staple if word spreads (at Saturday’s matinee, the audience only slightly outnumbered the cast) and if the producers can match results to ambitions.