Is ‘A Christmas Story’ on road to Broadway?

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO

Sitting in a downtown restaurant, the star of “A Christmas Story” was not looking to attract too much attention.

“Really, I have not done anything like this for 25 years,” said Peter Billingsley, who once played a kid named Ralphie in the iconic 1983 holiday movie.

Understandably, the 40-year-old Billingsley has endeavored, with notable success, to separate himself from Ralphie, lest he fall into the trap that often befalls child stars.

“People have pitched many things over the years,” he says. “In particular, they have kept wanting to remake the movie. But I think you only remake bad movies. Why would you want to remake a movie that has endured for more than 25 years? But this idea felt different — more like an extension of the film.”

The “idea” was a stage musical based on the film. “A Christmas Story, The Musical!” has been knocking around in various stages of regional development for a couple of years but is having a big coming-out Dec. 14 at the Chicago Theatre.

If all goes well in Chicago, and audiences respond to the leg-lamp kickline extravaganza, the Red Ryder fantasy gunslinger sequence, and other planned musical stagings of the familiar movie scenes, there’s a good shot the show will be on Broadway this time next year.

Because “A Christmas Story” has long been branded as, well, something you see around Christmas, the show has landed alongside “White Christmas,” “Elf” and other seasonal attractions with a short — but endlessly repeatable — shelf life. Such shows are tricky to make profitable because of the limited time wherein a show can recover its costs. But thanks in no small measure to that TBS cable marathon, this is a very strong title that very few people have seen in live musical form.

“There was talk about making this un-Christmas in some way,” said choreographer Warren Carlyle. “But it’s got the word Christmas in the title, so we decided we should embrace that and try and find the magic of what we all thought Christmas could be when we were kids.”

“A Christmas Story” has another advantage over other seasonal titles. The film only dates to 1983, and its cable exposure is much more recent than that. It’s beloved by people in their 30s and 40s who grew up watching it on TV — yet the nostalgic 1940s setting also offers a point of reference for an older generation.