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Gavin Hawk goes all Bedford Falls at American Stage

Bill DeYoung

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As George Bailey, Gavin Hawk is at the center of things in American Stage's "Wonderful Life." Photos provided.

As with millions of other American households, no Christmas holiday was complete for Gavin Hawk’s family without the annual viewing of Frank Capra’s film It’s a Wonderful Life, in which a small-town man named George Bailey finds out just how much he really means to those around him.

Hawk is playing George Bailey, and just about every other resident of Bedford Falls, New York, at American Stage in downtown St. Petersburg. Wonderful Life is a one-person adaptation of the Capra story by Helen R. Murray and Jason Lott. The final 2024 performances are tonight and Sunday afternoon, with good seats still available.

Wonderful Life is presented in staged-reading format, with Hawk and his script (on a music stand) moving from one part of the rustic-Christmas stage as the characters are conjured.

It’s anything but static, as the actor morphs between George, Mary, Clarence, Uncle Billy, Mr. Potter, Harry, Sam Wainwright, Violet Bick and the others. You know the story, but you’ve never seen or heard it told like this.

“It sounded like a really fun and interesting challenge to embody all of these characters,”” says Hawk, a professor of theater at Eckerd College. “And I liked the fact that the story wasn’t being told just from George Bailey’s point of view, as it is in the film. But rather from all of the characters’ points of view.

“The villain, Henry Potter, you kind of understand his point of view about why he’s doing what he does. And Mary, and Clarence the angel, it really kind of fleshes out those characters more. I like that you get more perspective from the whole town of Bedford Falls.”

About the only person we don’t hear from is the grumpy bald guy who says “I said Pottersville – don’t you think I know where I live?” when George’s car hits his tree.

Ah, but his was merely a cameo in the movie.

Murray, American Stage’s producing artistic director, is Hawk’s director for Wonderful Life. “We focused a lot on really making each character distinct, via voice and body choices,” Hawk explains. “We talked about the rhythm and the pacing of it. To start a little more slowly in the beginning, to get people used to the convention of the way we were telling the story, and also to get them to see and hear each character’s different voice. And as the play goes on, it starts to speed up.”

Although certain key scenes from the film, with characters interacting, make appearances (and it’s fun to witness Hawk change his voice and physicality in an instant), much of Wonderful Life consists of the characters telling their side of the story directly to an unseen person (that’d be us, the audience).

Hawk’s most recent role at American Stage was as the director of the visceral 2022 production of Green Day’s American Idiot; come February, he’ll be onstage in Tampa, in Stageworks’ production of Natalie Symons’ The People Downstairs.

For now, he’s inhabiting Bedford Falls.

He can’t help but return, time and again, to the parting message Clarence the angel leaves for George as an inscription in a book: Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

“That line always makes me tear up,” Hawk says. “Because as an actor, our business is all about comparing ourselves to other people that we have gone to school with, or we are in the community with … a lot of us are affected by this sense that we’re not doing enough. That we’re not being successful enough. That we’re not ‘making it,’ you know?

“So what I love about the message of this story is that it shows you all that stuff is fine and good, but what really matters is the people who love you, and who you love. And at the end of the day, if you can say that you were loved, you’ve had a great life.”

Remaining showtimes are 8 tonight and 2 p.m. Sunday. Find tickets at this link.

As Mr. Potter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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