This musical will show a different side to this traditional holiday crime family

Those lawless Herdmans! In “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” the beloved stage play based on Barbara Robinson’s 1971 children’s novel, the juvenile delinquents Imogene, Ralph, Claude, Leroy, Ollie and Gladys Herdman are a crime family waiting to happen.

They cuss, smoke cigars, drink cheap wine, shoplift. In elementary school, they get promoted from grade to grade because no teacher can bear the thought of having more than one of them in the same class. Worst of all, they’re bullies, taking other kids’ lunches and landing lead parts in the church Christmas pageant by leaning hard on the usual volunteers to keep their mouths shut.

In the end, of course, it’s the incorrigible Herdmans whose outsider perspective allows the community to see the Nativity story with fresh eyes. Before that point, however, they’re pretty much a pack of thugs who show up at Sunday School because they’ve heard it offered snacks.

But in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: The Musical,” opening Saturday in a production by Lexington Children’s Theatre at the Lexington Opera House, audiences come to see the rowdy Herdmans in a somewhat more sympathetic way, earlier than in the original play.

In this version, with music, lyrics and a new book by Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner, the Herdman clan is fleshed out more. And while they retain their rough edges — in the opening scene, they tie a boy up with Christmas lights, just for the heck of it — the Herdmans feel more like Everymans. They don’t always play nice, but hey, nobody’s perfect.

“The stage play focuses a lot on the adult characters,” says director Jeremy Kisling, who has worked in various capacities in the stage play, which Lexington Children’s Theatre has produced several times over the years. (This is LCT’s first crack at the musical version.) “The musical really takes us into what the young people are thinking and brings them to the forefront. It shows how the Herdmans are really just struggling to fit in, and how they take care of each other.”

The musical premiered in 2016 at the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, going on to become the North Carolina company’s top-grossing production by a margin of 30 percent.

“The play is wonderful, but the music carries emotion really well,” CTC artistic director Adam Burke says in an interview. “For example, there’s a moment in the book that describes a tear rolling down Imogene’s cheek. That’s hard to convey in a play, but it’s easier in a song.”

Perhaps crucially, Burke says, the musical includes a scene featuring the Herdmans that’s not in the play. “You get to see them in their garage at home, not around other children, in a way that shows a bit of vulnerability on their part.”

The musical also takes full advantage of the unchurched Herdmans’ outrage at some aspects of the Christmas story, such as the fact that Mary and Joseph were on the run from King Herod, who had decreed the execution of infants.

In a musical number called “Die, Herod, Die,” the Herdmans express their shock and anger that, as Burke puts it, “somebody was going to kill a baby.”

Even so, the musical doesn’t exactly turn the Herdmans into heroes, much less saints, because where would be the fun in that?

Just ask Nick Baker, 17, who in the Lexington Children’s Theatre production plays the boy whom the Herdmans turn into a human Christmas tree. “They also take my lunch,” he says. “But it’s a lot of fun to play the fear of the Herdmans.”

‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: The Musical’

By Lexington Children’s Theatre

When: 2 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 7; and 2 p.m. Dec. 8

Where: Lexington Opera House, 401 W. Short St., Lexington

Tickets: $20-$25 at (859) 254-4546 or lctonstage.org. The 7 p.m. Dec. 7 performance is pay-what-you-can.