STAGE REVIEW : Little Cheer in Reprise of an Old ‘Festival of Christmas’ by Lamb’s

Bah, humbug! When do we get to New Year’s?

Lamb’s Players Theatre has taken a step back to produce the same “Festival of Christmas” it last presented in 1985.

It’s a step back in every sense of the word. This show is more densely packed with cliches than a fruitcake is with fruit. It’s so bad, it’s almost funny--but really, it’s more boring than bad.

It’s a pity, too, since, on occasion, the revolving door of Christmas plays written by resident member Kerry Meads have been some of this ambitious little company’s most engaging work.

This year’s show is as predictable and pedestrian as a hack romance novel; one just wishes it would cut more quickly to the inevitable syrupy resolution.

Set in 1939, this year’s play takes place in a girls school where three girls have been left by their parents for the holidays, along with super headmistress Lauren Kane (Deborah Gilmour Smyth); her brother, goofy academy administrator Phillip Kane (Paul Eggington), and Phillip’s wife, bubbly teacher Candice Kane, a.k.a. Candy Kane (Vanda Eggington).

It’s clear from the start that this show is more about artifice than art, and less about character than caricature. Are the girls sad to be left alone for Christmas? Hardly. They’re too busy thinking about boys and what they think their headmistress needs for Christmas--a man.

Coincidentally, William Fields (David Cochran Heath), a long-lost friend of the family, shows up bearing presents for Lauren. Evidently, there was once something between these two, but Lauren does not seem happy to see him--at first.

“He is arrogant. He is irresponsible. He is pretentious!,” Lauren shouts. Pause. Her brother looks at her and says, amazed, “So, you’re still in love with him!”

By this time, the only audience members who haven’t figured out what’s going to happen are the ones who are sleeping.

Like all the “Festival of Christmas” scripts done at Lamb’s for the last 15 years, this one sports several Christmas carols, many of which are sung a cappella, and the usual Christmas messages. The singing, under Vanda Eggington’s musical direction, is sweet.

But the occasional pleasant moment cannot redeem the play. Meads, who has directed her own script, has dragged out the thin exposition past all bearability and encouraged shameless overacting along a very narrow range of emotions.

Mike Buckley did an apt, if uninspired, set design for the company’s theater in the round, giving us the requisite holly, mistletoe and Christmas tree--but no unique or memorable touches. Monica Hellzer’s costumes are festive, but not always flattering. Lawrence Oberman’s lighting design is serviceable. Pamela Turner’s choreography, like Eggington’s musical direction, is fine, but one wishes there were more dancing to divert one from the drone of the story.

If there’s one good thing to say about “A Festival of Christmas,” it is that it’s the kind of play that makes you glad Christmas comes around only once a year.

Although in this case, maybe even that’s too much.

“FESTIVAL OF CHRISTMAS”

By Kerry Meads. Director is Kerry Meads. Musical direction by Vanda Eggington. Choreography by Pamela Turner. Set by Mike Buckley. Costumes by Monica Hellzer. Lighting by Lawrence Oberman. Stage manager is Barbara D. Smith. With Nicole Scipione, Cynthia Peters, Sarah Zimmerman, Deborah Gilmour Smyth, Vanda Eggington, David Cochran Heath, Paul Eggington, Jon Lorenz, Jeffrey Stephens and J.J. Eliot. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays-Sundays, 10 a.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Tickets are $15-$20, with discounts for youth, groups, seniors and active-duty military. At 500 Plaza Blvd., National City. 474-4542.