'Christmas Story' ends run with love twist

The last show of "A Christmas Story" was sold out at The Acting Company on Sunday and the lady at the ticket desk had little sympathy for latecomers.

No estimate for the total box office take for the popular show was available yet, but it was clear the tale about a grown-up Ralph recalling how he achingly pined for a Red Ryder BB gun as his big present one Christmas long before went over well with audiences. Director John Elliott was all smiles, if that is any clue as to how rewarding The Acting Company's kitty computations were.

But it wasn't the show I wanted to see, really. I had already seen it. Twice.

What I wanted was a word with the two stars whose surprise marital engagement had been announced at the end of a performance the previous week. Harold D. Whitson Jr. and Bonnie Williams were in love and getting hitched.

After the actors took their bows that week, Whitson, 42, who played the grown up Ralph in the play - announced he had something to say.

There and then, the tall Whitson asked the pretty blond Williams, 37, who played his mother when in the show's past recollections, for her hand in marriage.

Whitson proved his sincerity with a sizeable diamond engagement ring.

"There wasn't a dry eye in the house," Elliot recalled.

Alas, yours truly had slipped away unawares from the theater just before this took place and only heard about it a few days later from Elliot; hence, this return to The Acting Company to get the story straight from the two happy soon-to-be's.

In a brief chat outside the backstage door, Whitson, Williams and other actors who witnessed it recalled the unusual betrothal.

When he came to The Acting Company, Whitson had no idea this might be the outcome, but relationships can and do bloom under the oddest of circumstances - or so femme fatale writers contend in scads of romance paperbacks.

The two had talked about it, sure, "but I didn't know he was going to do it at the show," Williams said.

Yes, reporters are crass enough to ask to see articles of evidence.

A smiling Williams flashed her left hand, with its ring finger of fate. Upon it twinkled a diamond. A big one.

But no, reporters are not so crass as to ask, "Is it real?" and "What did it cost?" Or, at least, this one wasn't.

The effort of this gesture of love must have taken a heavy toll on Whitson, for there was yet more drama to come.

Whitson was taken ill the following Friday, so director Elliot had to step in as understudy and do the adult Ralph part for that show.

"I knew the part, and I had the script, so I worked from that," Elliott said.

Whitson was back the next night and gamely did his part sitting down, with Elliot acting out the action in the scene where Ralph re-enacts the Red Ryder radio commercials of his youth.

Opening curtain was fast approaching for the last show, so the couple had little time to expand on their plans.

Williams, who plays Ralphie's mother, has appeared in some nine local plays in recent years and certainly will be seen again in other shows.

Perhaps the two will become the William Powell and Myrna Loy (that famous film couple in "Thin Man" series) of Yuba-Sutter.

As true theater fans, we all wish them the best of luck and hope we won't be reading about them in the tabloids one day, as we do Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

"Harbonnie" is a mellifluous moniker, certainly, but it lacks the zing of Brangelina.

Also present for this rapid-fire dual interview was Tad Hansen Crother, the young actor playing Ralphie.

How did he feel about this strange turn of events? Crother, who turns 12 in January, proved his acuity with this astute observation.

"It's kind of weird, me marrying my mother," he said.

That would be the "Christmas Story" character of his mother, of course, not his real-life mother, Kathleen Hansen, who was perfectly cast as the school teacher Miss Shields in the same show.

Whitson said he and Williams have no specific date in mind for their ultimate nuptials, but the cast has been invited to attend whenever the wedding happens.

Crother said he planned to be there to watch the adult Ralph wed the child Ralphie's mother, shaking his head, apparently contemplating the odd turns a boy's life can take.

Award-winning journalist and author Tom Nadeau has written for and acted on stage, screen, radio and television. Write to him at theaterland@gmail.com.