THEATER REVIEW : O. What a Welcome Mix! : California Repertory Presents Ragamuffin Characters in These Imaginative-Plays-Within-a-Play

Now that the season is upon us, we are being inundated with Christmases of all sorts, from Dickensian to Capotesque. How welcome, in the midst of them all, is the fresh breath of tingly, pine-scented air that comes with the California Repertory Company’s holiday production--Howard Burman’s adaptation of the stories that make up “An O. Henry Christmas.”

During the depression of 1893, some poor souls have gathered round a fire beneath a bridge in Manhattan. They are recognizable refugees from a few O. Henry stories, and Burman’s manner of tossing them together is impeccable and imaginative. But he doesn’t stop there.

A police officer (Armando Jose Duran), who would rather be home with his family, appears in search of a fugitive (Gregory Mortensen). The outcasts are hiding the criminal, of course, and for good reason: In return for a share of their meager broth, O.P., as he is called, will cheer their Christmas Eve with a few tales of hope and goodwill.

There’s a catch: They’ll have to act out his stories. They do so with a vengeance, gathering ersatz props and costumes and summoning up a joie de vivre that their unfortunate circumstances cannot destroy.

The audacity of the concept ultimately works to the show’s advantage under director Joanne Gordon, who has a gentle sense of period mood and who intricately balances the dramatic ingredients Burman has given her, from the realism of the ragamuffin group to the highly stylized world of the stories O.P. helps them re-create.

The characters include a young prostitute named Marguerite (Catherine Lane), who hasn’t the will to live through the night; Grover, a doctor who has lost his license and who thinks his advice might harm her; Agnes, an Earth Mother intent on seeing Marguerite survive, and Dinty, an artist who will give Marguerite the present that will keep her going. There also is Hal, the besotted scion of a wealthy New York family, and a frisky street-smart pickpocket named Fran.

*

On Lisa Hashimoto’s eclectic dump setting of old crates, window frames and battered trunks, under the warm chiaroscuro lighting by Sharon L. Alexander, the cast--in Anthony John Padilla’s authentic, well-worn period rags--couldn’t be more in the spirit of the time and the season. The actors have a ball bouncing back and forth between the worlds that exist under that bridge and in the imaginative plays-within-the-play.

Jamieson K. Price’s disenfranchised doctor is touching, as is Susan Scudder’s good-hearted Agnes. Duran’s police officer is as decent as cops should be, particularly when he insists warmly that O.P. return to his desperately ill wife, even though it means returning to prison. Mortensen lends O.P. a bright glow of optimism.

Elizabeth Taheri’s pickpocket gurgles with peppery charm, as do her genteel portrayals of Miss Hayden and her adoring Della in O.P.’s “Magi” story. Richard P. Gang’s artist doesn’t want to always play old men in the stories, but he plays them well.

Ultimately, it is Blake Steury’s show. As drunken Hal, with a grand Victorian theatricality and a penchant for athletic derring-do, Steury reminds one of the young Eugene O’Neill, before he put pen to paper. And Steury’s transformations into the roles O.P. gives Hal are stunning, from the loving Jim in “Magi,” to the stuttering Bobby Gilliam, who can’t get rid of the money left to him, to wildly comic Stuffy Pete, whose one meal of the year almost does him in and does destroy his benefactor.

* “An O. Henry Christmas,” Cal Rep, Cal State Long Beach, 7th Street and West Campus Drive, Long Beach. Wednesdays-Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 18. $15. (310) 985-5526. Running time: 1 hours, 40 minutes. Blake Steury Hal

Elizabeth Taheri: Fran

Gregory Mortensen: O.P.

Susan Scudder: Agnes

Richard P. Gang: Dinty

Armando Jose Duran: Guido

Catherine Lane: Marguerite

A California Repertory Company production of Howard Burman’s adaptation of stories by William Sidney Porter, directed by Joanne Gordon. Scenic design: Lisa Hashimoto. Lighting design: Sharon L. Alexander. Costume and make-up design: Anthony John Padilla. Sound design: Mark Abel. Stage manager: Gina Marie Soto.