‘Wonderful Life’: Helen Murray to the stage please!

Two years have come and gone since Helen R. Murray took the reins as producing artistic director at American Stage. Murray, a veteran theater administrator, director and playwright, began her career as a stage actor, but she hasn’t been under the lights in more than a decade.

“It’s a Wonderful Life.” Screengrab.

That all changes this weekend, as American Stage’s primary creative driver returns to her roots in the one-person show Wonderful Life. It’s an adaptation of the classic Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life, in which a single performer “portrays” George Bailey, Mary Bailey, Uncle Billy, Mr. Potter and virtually every other resident of tiny Bedford Falls.

Murray co-wrote the show, with actor Jason Lott, in 2016. She was, at the time, artistic director at The Hub Theatre in Virginia. It was nominated for Helen Hayes Award for Best New Adaptation.

“We wrote it with an Our Town-esque, ‘we are everyone’ kind of feel,” Murray said. “I love the piece so much because it is such a redemption story. It’s about a man understanding his worth, the importance of his community and him in his community. To be, that’s a very great holiday sort of message to have.

“People don’t realize how very relevant the story still is. As un-sexy as it sounds, it is a piece about the housing market and our economy, and what it takes to live in a world like that.”

The core of the story, of course, is the importance of the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan to the have-nots of World War II-era Bedford Falls.

“We deal with people who are in a housing crisis, who don’t have enough money to live,” Murray added, “and it takes a community banding together to help George in this time of trouble.”

Wonderful Life is booked at American Stage through Dec. 23, although Murray (directed by Anthony Gervais) is only performing this first weekend, Dec. 5 through 8. For the remainder of the run, she’ll direct actor Gavin Hawk (who himself directed last season’s propulsive American Idiot) as he assays everyone in George Bailey-land.

“Obviously, I know the play so well,” Murray said. “And I not only wrote it, I’ve directed it at a couple places. I’m really in love with the characters that we painted.

“And one of the best compliments I ever got on the show, somebody said to me ‘That was so great, seeing that – it was just like the movie.’ And I laughed, because it’s 99.9 percent original work. It truly is an adaptation; we only have a couple of hallmark lines that you’ll recognize straight out of the movie. In order to get it copyrighted as an original work, we had to make it truly its own thing.

“And so what that tells me is that we really captured the feel of that movie, the Capra-esque quality of it. We did our job being faithful to that narrative, even though so much of it is original.”

Wonderful Life runs approximately 70 minutes. Schedule and tickets are available here.

MORE: Arts Alive! podcast: Helen R. Murray, American Stage