HOLIDAY STAGE REVIEWS : ‘Holidaze’ a Mix of Light Sketches

The Holiday Inn Lounge Lizards, looking like a band that just played some back room in the North Pole, are banging out Christmas songs in the cramped lobby of the Friends and Artists Theatre, festively decorated for the season.

The merrymakers are blocking entry to the theater so you have to stand and listen to them, which gets pretty old after the first couple of songs. But ‘tis the season to be jolly, and a table laden with free Christmas cookies and assorted mineral waters eases the wait.

Then comes the show, “Holidaze,” a cornucopia of knockabout sketches that bear a fragile and sometimes clever link to scenes that backdrop the celebration.

“Cue God” by Carol Critchley is a funny look at a director (the flappable Jonathan Fahn) nervously cuing the action for a Christmas extravaganza. Cuing God is the least of his problems. Jennie Kaplan’s “Hanukkah Song” has her singing with song-cards, a triangle player and a trombonist.

Perhaps best among the dozen numbers is Mary Hanes’ dramatic “Round Midnight.” A cabbie and his uptown passenger late to a New Year’s Eve party (Matt Kirkwood and Nancy Kaine) are stranded on a freeway when the taxi breaks down. A tenuous romance is kindled before reality sets in and a passing driver offers to take the lady back to her rich friends.

Co-written by Hanes, Critchley and Kaplan, and directed by Jon Simpson, with musical direction by Vida Vierra (who caps the evening with a lovely vocal, “The Birth of Light”), “Holidaze” is like that umpteenth holiday party you attended: You remember little the next morning but something tells you that you had a good time.

“Holidaze,” Friends and Artists Theatre Ensemble, 1761 N. Vermont Ave., L.A., Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 19. $10. (213) 662-3318. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.