West Virginia Public Theatre brings out a new production of It’s a Wonderful Life for the 2025 holiday season.
written by christy perry tuohey
Shake up a snow globe and watch what happens. Perhaps you’ll see a sparkly little town shimmering in the glitter or white bits of plastic snow drifting softly onto Christmas tree branches. That was the type of scene onstage at Morgantown’s Lyell B. Clay Concert Theatre back in 2018.
Then a different type of shake-up occurred.
Back then, West Virginia Public Theatre performed the stage production of the beloved classic film It’s a Wonderful Life. Artistic Director Gerald McGonigle had hired a writer to adapt the film script for theater, and the Christmas favorite drew crowds. “The performance was amazing,” says Charity Woods of Braxton County, who was in the audience then with her husband and two daughters. “I feel like everything worked great together—the performers, the props, the costumes.”
McGonigle and the play’s set designer collaborated to create unique scenery for the show. “I said, you know, the story’s become sort of iconic, like it’s almost like we’re looking at a little snow globe, but it’s Bedford Falls,” McGonigle remembers. “So we’re in the big theater, and he created this big, round arch. And then for the backdrop, we said, ‘Let’s just surround the whole stage with stars.’”
The snow globe under a starry sky was scheduled for a second round of performances in 2021, but the show did not go on. “We were about to come back to It’s a Wonderful Life, and COVID-19 hit,” McGonigle says. So they stowed scenery pieces away in a barn for safekeeping.
Now, in 2025, they’ve pulled everything back out of the barn and are ready to put on another show. Crews of carpenters, painters and electricians spent this past summer re-rigging, rewiring, and repainting the Wonderful Life set. “It was in surprisingly good shape,” McGonigle says. A couple of set pieces mysteriously disappeared over the past seven years, and those were recreated.
The theater company made casting calls in September. McGonigle expects the cast will include actors from across the country and also some local thespians. Thanksgiving week brings two and a half weeks of intense cast rehearsals, followed by technical rehearsal. After that, the snow globe glitter stirs, Zuzu Bailey proclaims every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings, and George Bailey offers to lasso the moon for his beloved Mary.
It’s a Wonderful Life 2025 debuts on Saturday, December 13, for a 2 p.m. matinee and a 7:30 p.m. evening performance at the WVU Canady Creative Arts Center. Three more shows are scheduled for the 14th, 18th, 19th. Reserve your seats online at wvuccam.universitytickets.com.
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