A Child’s Christmas in Wales opens Thursday

Monmouth College and the Buchanan Center for the Arts are staging a holiday production that amounts to “must-see” theatre.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales will be presented from Nov. 21-24 at the College’s Wells Theater. Directed by Monmouth theatre professor Todd Quick, the play is an adaptation of what Quick called “a really beautiful Dylan Thomas poem.”

The play marks the return to the stage of longtime Monmouth theatre professor Doug Rankin, who last had a leading role in 1990. That role was when he starred as Henry II alongside daytime drama legend and Monmouth alumna Helen Wagner Willey ’38 in The Lion in Winter, the Wells Theater’s inaugural production in 1990.

The play also marks the first starring role for sixth-grader Drew Carlson, son of Monmouth Admission Event Manager Michelle Flaar Carlson ’04, and her husband, Adam Carlson ’04.

Billed as “Christmas just the way Christmas always should be,” the play will also help usher in the holiday season and give audience members a sense of what’s ahead in their own lives.