A holiday miracle is currently taking place on stages around the country.<\/p>\n
But it took some time to get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cMiracle on 34th Street the Musical,\u201d with three shows this week at Detroit\u2019s Fox Theatre, has been around for more than 60 years, but seldom staged and never taken on the road until this year. With music and script by Tin Pan Alley songsmith Meredith Wilson \u2014 including the standard \u201cIt\u2019s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,\u201d which he wrote 12 years before\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s an adaptation of the 1947 film that\u2019s become a Christmas classic. The musical was staged under the name \u201cHere\u2019s Love\u201d due to copyrights and spent nine months on Broadway, from October 1963 to July 1964.<\/p>\n
Fun fact: One of its songs, \u201cShe Hadda Go Back,\u201d became \u201cTrouble,\u201d with different lyrics, in Wilson\u2019s subsequent show, \u201cThe Music Man.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Jim Vollersten of Rochester, New York-based Premier Theater Productions was looking for a new holiday show for the 2015 season at the city\u2019s Kodak Theatre, he came across the musical, which had since been retitled, and thought, \u201cWhy hasn\u2019t this been done before \u2026 and why has this never toured?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a Christmas show,\u201d Vollertsen explains. \u201cIt only works during the Christmas season, which means it has limited appeal on the road. Usually, when you put up a show, you want to be able to do 40 weeks, which wouldn\u2019t work for this.\u201d What piqued his interest in touring the show, however, was reading survey stories about people\u2019s favorite holiday movies. \u201c(\u2018Miracle on 34th Street\u2019) came up in every single survey as one of the Top 5 Christmas movies \u2014 in every one. So I made the decision to go forward with and look at it as a long-term project and build the thing into a Christmas tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\""Miracle](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TOP-L-Arts-Miracle1214-01.jpg\")
“Miracle on 34th Street the Musical” has a 23-member cast, plus three musicians and a conductor, adding 15 local musicians to the orchestra at each stop. Another 20 people are in the production crew, including parent chaperones for the two lead youth actresses. (Photo courtesy of 313 Presents)<\/p>\n
\u201cMiracle on 34th Street the Musical\u2019s\u201d first-ever tour opened Nov. 21 in Rochester and will play in eight cities this year, according to Vollertsen, wrapping up Jan. 4 in Syracuse. It features a 23-member cast, plus three musicians and a conductor, adding 15 local musicians to the orchestra at each stop. Another 20 people are in the production crew, including parent chaperones for the two lead youth actresses.<\/p>\n
By contract, the story \u2014 about a young girl (Susan Walker) and her cynical, divorced mother (Doris Walker) encountering the real Kris Kringle working at Macy\u2019s department store \u2014 and musical numbers cannot be altered, right down to using a dated term like \u201cdame.\u201d But the touring production makes use of five video walls for scene changes, in line with contemporary Broadway standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t want it to look too modern, because it is a period piece, but we had to give it dazzle to keep the kids interested,\u201d explains Vollertsen, who also worked with Eddie Money on his musical \u201cTwo Tickets to Paradise.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a first-class production. My investors will tell you we spent too much money on it, but we spent the money for the future, not just one year.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s already eyeballing the future, in fact. Vollertsen says booking has already begun for the musical\u2019s 2026 run, which he intends to include two companies, East and West, ala the Harlem Globetrotters or Trans-Siberian Orchestra.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no question in my mind that you need a fresh Christmas show out there,\u201d Vollertsen says. \u201cIt\u2019s got a great score; great songs. We\u2019ve got some great voices (in the cast). It\u2019s got history. People know what it is, but they\u2019ve never seen it (as a musical) before. Hopefully, once they do, they\u2019ll want to make it a part of their holiday every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMiracle on 34th Street the Musical\u201d plays at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, Dec. 16-18, at the Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com. A discounted ticket, with $5 from each going to Make-A-Wish Michigan, can be purchased via 313promos.com\/wish<\/a>.\u00a0313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com.<\/p>\n![\"By](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TOP-L-Arts-Miracle1214-02.jpg\")
By contract, the story told and the musical numbers performed in “Miracle on 34th Street the Musical” cannot be altered from the original, right down to using a dated term like “dame.” But the touring production makes use of five video walls for scene changes, in line with contemporary Broadway standards. (Photo courtesy of 313 Presents)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A holiday miracle is currently taking place on stages around the country. But it took some time to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[967,181,143,145,144,420],"class_list":["post-93299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-entertainment","tag-latest-headlines","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}