Holiday Silliness

The gay-themed comedy sketches in “The Queer Nutcracker,” now at the Celebration Theatre, are thinner than Calista Flockhart after a hard winter in Donner Pass. However, despite the meagerness of Adam Bock’s comic material, Derek Charles Livingston and his high-spirited, appropriately goofy cast ensure that a convivial spirit prevails.

The show opens with the familiar scene from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker,” in which the Mouse King (Tess Borden) menaces winsome Clara (Conrad A. Corral, in wispy drag), with the Nutcracker (Andrea Knight) soon marching into the fray. Cute but hardly groundbreaking, this gender-bending snippet sets the tone for the rest of the evening.

Other segments include the funny “Yiddish for Christmas,” in which Pammy Stern (Caroline Keva) gives the audience an impromptu Yiddish lesson, then segues into the saga of her failed marriage--to the wrong gender, as she soon realizes.

*

Then there’s the less successful “A Very Chanel Xmas”--a laborious “Christmas Carol” parody that must have seemed funnier on paper than it does on stage. And do we really need both “The Dance of the Butches” and “The Dyke Ballet” in the same show? Or is that gilding the leather?

Borden livens the mix with her “Mistletoe Moments,” in which she reads actual Christmas wishes solicited from the audience beforehand--a few of them surprisingly moving.

Livingston and choreographer Randy Rene extract some agile turns--literally--from the cast, most obviously not trained dancers. If you accept this show for what it is--a lighthearted romp, without pretensions to anything more--you just may be swept up in the silliness and fraternal warmth of the occasion.

* “The Queer Nutcracker,” Celebration Theatre, 7051-B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. $20. Special New Year’s Eve fund-raiser, Dec. 31, 10:30 p.m. $50. (323) 289-2999. Running time: 1 hour.