SLC City Weekly taps Christmas in Connecticut as “essential”

Salt Lake City’s City Weekly selected the musical as an “Essential Arts & Entertainment” pick in their November 29 issue. Here’s the story, by Scott Renshaw.

Eric William Morris & Alyse Alan Louis

New Broadway musicals in recent years have tended to look towards pop-culture properties like recent hit films for their source material. So it wasn't exactly intuitive to think instead about a nearly-80-year-old holiday movie like Christmas in Connecticut—in which Barbara Stanwyck played a city-girl writer trying to keep up her published persona as a farmer's housewife—as something audiences would embrace.

According to Patrick Pacheco, who co-wrote the book for the new musical, "For any [musical] adaptation, the important question to answer is, 'Does it sing?' ... So I watched it, and yeah, it did sing." Pacheco's collaborator, Erik Forrest Jackson, added, "We just found such a strong contemporary resonance, in the age of social media, of people presenting perfect snapshots of their perfect families and perfect homes. There was something so comedic and kind of powerful in examining that through this kind of nostalgic lens."

Pacheco and Jackson kept the World War II-era setting and the premise of a military veteran visiting the protagonist's fake-farm for a home-cooked holiday meal, but tweaked it to create more of a romantic triangle. The tweaking process is ongoing, as the creators develop the show after a premiere at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House in 2022. "As soon as the run ended in Connecticut, we wanted to get right back into it," Pacheco says. "We were excited, and we had learned a lot."

Christmas in Connecticut comes to Pioneer Theatre Company's Simmons Memorial Theatre (300 S. 1400 East) Dec. 1 – 16, with performances Monday – Saturday and ticket prices starting at $55. Visit pioneertheatre.org for tickets and additional event information.