THEATER REVIEW : VALLEY WEEKEND : ‘Farndale’ Troupe’s Bad Isn’t Good Enough : Spoof of ‘A Christmas Carol’ falls flat on performances that blur the line between intended and unintended faux pas.

On paper, David McGillivray’s and Walter Zerlin Jr.’s spoof, “The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ ” is just the medicine for the annual Scrooge overdose. Unfortunately, the reality, at the Sanford Meisner Center for the Arts under Martin Barter’s and Karl Calhoun’s direction, is something else.

The play imagines a completely hapless troupe of amateurs huffing and puffing their way through a stage version of Charles Dickens’ story. It’s a world where the male stage manager doubles as Mrs. Cratchit (Craig Watanabe), where the local prima donna playing Scrooge (Casey Payden) accidentally kicks over the foam tombstones in the crucial graveyard scene, where action constantly grinds to a crawl because poor Mercedes Levine has to play Bob Cratchit and other roles (T.J. Paolino) in a neck brace after a near-fatal car crash.

“A Christmas Carol,” Dickens and stage amateurs all get skewered, roasted and consumed in McGillivray’s and Zerlin Jr.’s treatment, which may be a wonderful thing if the company doing the skewering is very, very good at being very, very awful.

This company is only OK at best, so the play ends up being a one-note gag of stupefying length. The clear signal is seldom sent from the actors that they’re all much better than their amateur characters, since the built-in stage sloppiness (overly loud voices, overly long blackouts, crashing miscues) isn’t always restricted to the play. These actors aren’t so brilliant that they can pull off the trick of making us laugh and making fun of others at the same time.

Ironically, the experience here is not unlike seeing a semi-confident amateur group doing “Noises Off.” When the line between talented pro comics and amateurs gets blurred, it makes for a long evening.

*

One scene after another is played at full shriek. Payden especially doesn’t build her egocentric wannabe star to any comic crescendo, and Wylie Small’s performance as the goody-two-shoes hostess Phoebe (who also tries to play Tiny Tim, among other parts) is a one-note spoof of irritating sincerity.

Paolino is by far the best at drawing a clear line between the spoofer and the spoofee, milking every moment like a Borscht Belt version of Tim Conway. Andrea Adams suggests a small-town gal over her head onstage, but even that gets old. Watanabe confuses a deadpan approach with plain old flatness.

The really nutty moments here make for some of the goofier business you’ll see in any Christmas show. (Check out how Scrooge tools around with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-To-Come.) Paolino and Payden deliver some truly insane, absurd comic bits just when the show seems ready to collapse in front of your eyes. But the last laugh, alas, appears to be not on the good women of Farndale Avenue, but the struggling actors of Lankershim Boulevard.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of ‘A Christmas Carol.’ ”

* WHERE: Sanford Meisner Center for the Arts, 5124 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m. Ends Saturday.

* HOW MUCH: $12.50.

* CALL: (818) 509-9651.