Beasley's Christmas Party

Booth Tarkington wrote two of the first four novels to win a Pulitzer Prize: Alice Adams in 1919 and The Magnificent Ambersons in 1922. "Tarkington has the true touch," said Mark Twain. "His work always satisfies me." In 1909, Booth Tarkington published the stirring novelette Beasley's Christmas Party, the romantic tale of an honest bachelor politician, a terminally ill orphan who enters his life, and the Christmas party that reunites him with his lost love. "I seldom read Christmas stories," Twain remarked, "but this is very beautiful. It has made me cry. I want you to read it." Dramatist Greg Wright gently and reverently adapts this story for the stage, updating the setting to the eve of the Second World War and fleshing out the plot and cast with characters borrowed from Tarkington's Ramsey Milholland (1918). The result is a fresh alternative to the usual holiday fare, and a timely examination of the reasons we go to war-and the reasons we wish we didn't have to. December 7, 1941 was indeed a "day that will live in infamy," as was September 11, 2001. And the way that we thought the day prior irrevocably shaped what we did the day after.