STAGE REVIEW : ‘GIFTS OF MAGI’ IS BETTER LEFT UNOPENED

It seems very Scrooge of me to grumble at such a well-intended production as “The Gifts of the Magi” at the Coast Playhouse. But we know all about good intentions.

This mini-musical, set in sunny Los Angeles circa 1910 (the single most dangerous period for nostalgia dripping in sugar) describes itself as a family show. It may be, but in 1986, whose family?

Based on two O. Henry short stories (“The Gift of the Magi” and “The Cop and the Anthem”), it’s (a) a curious amalgamation of two plots that don’t mesh except by force and (b) a musical with pretensions to being a mini-opera.

The results are a tedious and confused 90 minutes of show, too uneventful for children and too naive for adults. It’s what book writer Mark St. Germain has done to O. Henry that hurts.

A pair of freshly married kids in the big City of the Angels for the first time, are finding it (surprise, surprise) a most unfriendly place. Granted, we’re in 1910, but people as strait-laced and dull as hard-luck Jim (Bill Hutton) and patient Della (Dale Kristien) don’t make you love them. They make you crazy.

Jim’s out of a job, but he’s also a bit of a wimp. Della’s the dutiful, long-suffering wife whose mawkish solicitude drives Jim (and the audience) to the brink of distraction. It’s Christmas, the pennies are dwindling, the marriage is strained, the self-righteousness rampant--and all you can wish them is fewer duets and a little more spunk.

The other story (call it a subplot) is a lot livelier. It’s about Soapy Smith, a bum who can’t get himself arrested. But how does it connect to Jim and Della? (Not very well.) And is Soapy a he or a she? The impish Jane Carr (lately of “Nicholas Nickleby”) plays Soapy as a person of wondrously indeterminate gender, unaided by a text that only fleetingly suggests this Soapy might be a she in male clothing.

No reason’s given for the transvestitism (let alone organically provided), but, male or female, Soapy has the best lines, best gags, best songs out of a field of 14 provided by St. Germain (lyrics) and Randy Courts (music)--even if they are not easy to identify in a program that lists them without performance attributions.

Soapy’s “Short Song” and “Bum Luck” are two we enjoyed and are able to correctly assign, but the show is riddled with lengthy arias (more than competently handled by Hutton and Kristien) that simply forget that this is supposed to be light entertainment for the holiday season and not Verdi.

Bradd Wong as an appealing paper boy who helps stitch the incompatible stories together, and Hap Lawrence and Lindy Robbins as male and female representations of the City (as well as a collection of other cameos) are satisfying performers locked in a show that offers them no chance to shine.

As though structural flaws and lackluster book, music and lyrics were not enough, there are also functional problems. Director David Galligan has had to mount “Gifts of the Magi” on a narrow strip of stage before a vaudevillian backdrop that conceals the set for “Strange Snow,” running weekend evenings at the same address.

The drop (painted nicely enough by designer Fred M. Duer, but far too busy for the small events before it) forces the action into shallow traffic patterns across the theater’s exceptionally wide stage. When it breaks loose into the aisles--as it does from time to time--Ann M. Archbold’s flat and unsubtle lighting blinds the audience.

Larry Hyman has supplied adequate basic choreography and David Bright’s piano is plenty of accompaniment for a musical as slender as this one. What is oddest is this “Magi’s” capacity for misfiring: When it tries to be funny, it sings; when it sings, it’s boring.

“Magi” cannot overcome this handicap, because it hasn’t figured out what it is, nor whom it’s meant to satisfy. Certainly not O. Henry, who must be turning in his grave at the pap that has been made of his Jim and Della’s heartbreaking anguish. Some short stories were just meant to be short stories.

Producers are Roger Berlind, Franklin R. Levy and Gregory Harrison in association with Catalina Production Group, Ltd. Performances at 8325 Santa Monica Blvd. run Mondays and Tuesdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturday, Sunday, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., with a special performance Friday, 2 p.m. Tickets: $15. Ends Dec. 31 (213) 650-8507.