Theater review | "Christmas Foundling" reaffirms bonds that make a family

Holiday time is family time, and Taproot Theatre's seasonal offering, "The Christmas Foundling," celebrates the loving family. It's based on a short story by Bret Harte, a 19th-century Western writer.

Since so much Christmas lore is centered in Europe or New England, it's refreshing to see a holiday fable set in an 1850s California mining camp.

Playwright Norman Allen has reworked Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp" to create a captivating and heartwarming drama about a group of crusty miners who are left with a newborn boy on Christmas Eve. They don't know the child's heritage, so with goat's milk, goodwill and lots of love, they raise him as their own.

Young Tom lives in a cabin with Hoke (well-played by Jason Adkins) and Old Jake (Grant Goodeve, as a lovable old Scotsman who imparts much of his wisdom through song). These men teach the boy all they know. They and their three miner friends inculcate in Tom a love of nature, and they try to serve as good models for him. That means no more drinking or swearing and no ladies of pleasure.

When Tom is 10, his dead mother's sister from Boston tracks him down and insists on returning him to his genetic family. The family that nurtured and loves him must give him up to the family that shares genes with him. But Christmas tales never end on a sad note, and this one is no exception.

Karen Lund has directed the production with a sure hand. She's chosen her cast wisely. Especially good is David Anthony Lewis as the miner Moscow. This bear of a man with a thick black beard and a deep, rumbling voice plays a hearty Russian immigrant so well you'd think he just arrived from St. Petersburg.

Lund makes her actors pay attention to the smallest gesture — a glance, a well-timed cough, a shrug, a lift of an eyebrow. The performers convey as much in body language as they do in words.

It's a play that raises many issues. We're asked to consider the contrasting values of the natural world vs. the man-made world. We are made to recognize that ethnocentrism too often leads to debilitating hatred of "the other." Most important, the play demands that we take another look at the definition of "family." Is not enduring love enough?

Here two men living together in California successfully create a family abounding in love and guided by Judeo-Christian values. How prescient of Taproot to have selected this play at this particular time in American history.

Nancy Worssam: nworssam@earthlink.net