In a naughty world, who makes the nice list? New show asks — and answers — that question

Is Alan Muraoka naughty or nice? It’s an important question this time of year when Santa Claus is drawing up his list of who deserves gifts and whose stocking will be empty.

Naughty: Alan Muraoka, an actor now directing Bristol Riverside Theatre’s upcoming world premiere of “The Nice List” holiday show, sometimes curses.

Nice: Alan, the current owner of Hooper’s Store on “Sesame Street,” “doesn’t have those cuss words,” said Muraoka, who plays that character on the children’s show, as he has for 27 seasons. “My character is really me, but just a little nicer. I have to self-edit in public. I don’t want anything to compromise my existence as that persona on the show.”

So what’s the verdict? Naughty or nice?

The question comes up nonstop in “The Nice List,” with words and lyrics by Phoebe Kreutz, once a puppet wrangler on “Sesame Street.” (Wranglers clean and prepare the puppets for the show.)

In “The Nice List,” Santa unexpectedly must leave town, so he deputizes two elves to finalize the nice list in time for delivery. What was Santa thinking, though? The two elves he put in charge couldn’t be more opposite. There’s “Gumdrop,” the nice elf, and “Raisin,” the naughty elf.

As the two work on the list, Gumdrop experiences a moral crisis. “Some of the nice kids don’t want to eat their vegetables. They have a meltdown in the store,” Muraoka said. “Does that one little incident make them naughty? Ultimately only a few children remain on the nice list.”

A crisis ensues. What will happen to Christmas? Will anyone get presents?

Knowing holiday theater the way we do, we can probably guess the outcome. But along the way, we learn some lessons about naughty and nice, discovering, for example, that naughty elf Raisin is nicer than she appears. (By the way, this is an unusual holiday special in that the two lead characters – the elves – are female.)

Muraoka, who spends three months a year taping episodes of “Sesame Street,” raised the same question about Oscar the Grouch. “On the one hand, Oscar the Grouch is naughty,” Muraoka said. “But he has a little worm called Slimey. He takes care of Slimey and loves him so much. Does that make Oscar naughty or nice, because he’s both.”

“That’s a really important message in our world because there’s so much division,” Muraoka said.

“We all have moments of being nice and being naughty,” he said. “If you are kind and you have your empathy, if you try to do your best and be good, that’s enough and you are enough and nobody’s perfect.

“You are good enough,” he said. “You are perfectly imperfect.”

FYI

“The Nice List,” Dec. 9-28, Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, 215-785-0100  

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