A Christmas Story: The Musical

A Christmas Story: The Musical is a family Christmas comedy with songs, based on the 1983 film A Christmas Story. Both trace back to Jean Shepherd, a radio humorist, and the film comes from his 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. The stage version has a book by Joseph Robinette and a score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

This page covers a visit rather than a New York run. The show is a stop on a touring production, with four performances over one weekend at State Theatre New Jersey in New Brunswick, outside New York City. The theater's page does not name a producer, but Big League Productions runs the annual tour of the show.

The musical is set in Indiana in December 1940. Shepherd himself narrates as a radio host, looking back on one Christmas from his boyhood, when he was a bespectacled kid named Ralphie Parker. At home are his gruff father, known as The Old Man, his mother and his little brother Randy. Outside are his teacher Miss Shields, his friends Schwartz and Flick, and the bully Scut Farkus.

All Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun, which he first spots in the window of Higbee's department store. Every adult he asks gives the same answer: he will shoot his eye out. Around that wish the show gathers the small disasters of a childhood winter, among them a frozen flagpole that becomes the stage for a triple-dog dare, and a leg lamp that his father wins in a contest and sets proudly in the front window.

Pasek and Paul wrote the music and lyrics. Their other credits include the Tony-winning Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land, which brought them an Oscar, and The Greatest Showman, which brought a Golden Globe. The stage version runs in two acts.

"Red Ryder Carbine Action BB Gun" is named for the toy Ralphie wants, and "You'll Shoot Your Eye Out" echoes the warning he hears from every adult. The company performed that number on the Tony Awards broadcast in 2013.

The touring production has sets by Michael Carnahan and lighting by Charlie Morrison. Onstage you will find the leg lamp, the pink bunny pajamas and a department store Santa. Companies change from year to year, so check the official website for the cast of this engagement.

The musical began in December 2009 at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, in an earlier version with a different score by Scott Davenport Richards. Pasek and Paul were then hired to write a new score.

Broadway followed in 2012, with a limited engagement at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre that began previews on November 7, opened on November 19 and closed on December 30. Dan Lauria played Jean Shepherd, and Johnny Rabe and Joe West alternated as Ralphie. A return engagement at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in December 2013 brought back much of that cast.

The national tour began in 2014 and was relaunched in 2025. Fox aired a live television version on December 17, 2017, with several new songs by Pasek and Paul. The first European production opened in London on November 28, 2018.