Book-It's Red does a star turn for Christmas

Some performances are ensemble work, some are star turns. While the Book-It ensemble cheerfully hoofing through Red Ranger Came Calling are the company’s usual solid crew, the shining star of this production is a recent Cornish grad, Jerick Hoffer.

Long and lanky, physically Hoffer has little in common with Berkeley Breathed’s cantankerous Red. Like all of Breathed’s oddball characters, most famously Opus the penguin, young Red is an exaggeration of unattractive features, a squat, balloon-headed child of pugnacity.

But when Hoffer sticks out his backside, bends his knees, and flails his elbows in youthful outrage at the duplicity of adults, he transforms into the perfect Red. Lonely and angry, Red remains desperate for a little magic in a world that continuously gives him the metaphorical equivalent of a wedgie.

The grace of Breathed’s “guaranteed true Christmas story,” and Myra Platt’s and Edd Key’s nifty musical adaptation for the stage, is that it lets Red be Red. He’s a wildly unpleasant child whose Aunt Vy (nimbly played by Theresa Holmes) qualifies for sainthood for boarding Red during Christmas.

But on a 1930s Vashon Island battered by the Depression, as is Red’s wider world, people make do. And Red’s stomping travels through the damp undergrowth of the island lead to spectacular if unexpected results.

If you love the book or just want a little something different, but ultimately sweet, for Christmas, Book-It’s Red Ranger Came Calling runs through Dec. 23. For this show only, they are performing at the Eve Alvord Theatre, part of the Seattle Children’s Theatre complex at the Seattle Center.

Tickets are available online, at the Book-It box office in the lower level of the Center House, or at the theater two hours before the show opens.