Familiar comedy soldiers on in ‘Hollywood Canteen’

It’s December 1944, and the air crackles with nervous excitement at a canteen in North Hollywood, where a famous entertainer is scheduled to headline a holiday show for military personnel.

Then a call comes through. There’s been a roadway accident; the star is stuck behind it. Faced with a roomful of eager soldiers, the panicked canteen staffers ponder their next move.

Is the situation hopeless? Or merely Bob Hope-less?

Such is the predicament in “The North Hollywood Canteen Holiday Spectacular,” presented by Fire Rose Productions at the Secret Rose Theatre. It’s a clever setup. What follows, though, is awfully familiar (at least to anyone who’s seen “The 1940’s Radio Hour”) and gets further undermined by uneven writing and performances.

Implicitly, audience members are cast as the waiting soldiers. The canteen staffers do their best to entertain us with impromptu stories and a mix of holiday and patriotic songs.

The eight performers include Lt. Lovejoy (Jim Shine), who runs the canteen, and Rosie (Laura Ware), a kitchen worker who, you guessed it, also rivets on a local assembly line. The gruff, pompous Maj. Rooney (Tony Matthews, the show’s author) peremptorily casts himself as the show’s MC, and Pfc. Johnson (Gordon Glor) is pulled from the audience to play piano.

Harmony numbers wander in and out of tune; choreography is rudimentary. Veiled references to such present-day topics as the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy occasionally pull us out of the moment, and we can’t help but feel that a sacred trust is being broken when the performers tear open soldiers’ private letters to read to the crowd.

Still, there’s no resisting the pull of nostalgia (nicely calibrated by director Murphy Cross), much less the somber reality, 59 years later, of U.S. military personnel again spending holidays away from home.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“The North Hollywood Canteen Holiday Spectacular,” Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Today and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $18. (818) 623-4291. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

*Following the ‘Thrance’ thread

“Thrance” is a conflation of “theater” and “dance.” Considering “A Christmas Thrance 2003” at the McCadden Place Theatre, it could as easily refer to Dancer, Prancer, that whole crowd.

Since 1998, movement maverick Jessica Schroeder has evolved a self-defined aesthetic in her Outlaw Style Thrance Company. The iconoclastic collaborative discipline inverts and reinvents traditional dance and acting techniques in wholehearted, imaginative ways.

Schroeder’s fourth annual Noel blowout finds her snappy cast and madcap designers attacking more than 30 seasonal standards with witty commitment. The fun begins with Angus Charles’ sharp soundtrack pouring forth Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians’ marathon “Jingle Bells.” The upper level and staircase disgorge the maniacally grinning concert choir-clad cast, whose wacky maneuvers cement the event’s intent.

The eclectic program merges acerbity and schmaltz, punctuated by vintage celebrity holiday promos. Schroeder (as taut and nuanced a performer as she is a director-choreographer) and company are fearless, diving headlong into this Yuletidal wave of hybrid high jinks.

Marcia Svaleson invests Tammy Wynette’s “Blue Christmas” with a passion that recalls Nora Kaye. Victor Isaac barrels across James Brown’s “Please Come Home for Christmas,” to house-rattling effect. Producer Stephanie Bell, Joseph Beck, Lucius Bryant, Arimah Trinidad and Andy Wolf typify the ensemble’s individuality and spontaneity. Given the tiny venue, their controlled abandon is awesome.

The many airplay fade-outs tarnish the trajectory and lead to some redundant transitions, despite Kevin Cadwallader’s ace lighting. Still, who cares? This crazy Christmas quilt is quirky and altogether enthrancing.

-- David C. Nichols

“A Christmas Thrance 2003,” McCadden Place Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Today and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $12. (323) 860-6803. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

*

Dark humor in ‘White People’

Playwright-director Ernest Thompson releases his inner curmudgeon and plunges headfirst into a snowdrift in “White People Christmas,” a muddled dark comedy about family dysfunction at the Zephyr Theatre.

Thompson has treated family foibles before, most notably in his play “On Golden Pond,” the film version of which scored him an Academy Award. “Pond” concerned curmudgeon-with-a-heart-of-gold Ernest Thayer Jr. and his doting wife, Ethel, roles that won Oscars for Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. In “White People,” that Fonda- esque cantankerousness is generalized and heightened, sometimes to pointed comic effect, sometimes generically.

The action opens with Evelyn (Linda Porter), the elderly matriarch of the piece, narrating from a big storybook -- a device that lets Evelyn soliloquize crankily about various pet peeves. When Evelyn’s suicidal granddaughter Kikki (April Matson) steals the family car and flees halfway across the country to Evelyn’s house at Christmastime, the rest of the family -- workaholic dad Gerald (Richard Gilliland), Zoloft-popping mom Alley (Katie Layman) and conflicted gay son Rupert (Patrick Brennan) -- reluctantly follow. The family is hunkered down for a typically poisonous holiday when the mysterious Nick (Willie C. Carpenter), a black Santa Claus, dispels the acrimonious atmosphere with a blast of pure Christmas spirit.

Porter, a spry actress whose lived-in face looks a lot like an apple doll’s, delivers an impressively self-possessed performance -- and indeed, the actors are all worthy pros who nail what laughs there are to be found. However, they are largely hemmed in by their blatantly stereotypical characters and the piece’s erratic tone.

Sticky sentimentality bleeds into the prevalent cynicism, while the characters’ actions and motivations seem similarly inconsistent. Frequent and explicit sexual references are also problematic. Granted, some of the naughty references are wildly funny, but others are strangely self-conscious, disrupting the flow of dialogue like boulders dropped in a stream.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“White People Christmas,” Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 28. $20. (323) 852-9111. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

*

Sick of Dickens? Not this version

It’s Christmas Eve 2003. Celebrity has-been Ebineezer Scrooge (James McClelland) is plucked. His comeback holiday special is a shambles. Small wonder: The acrid star has fired everyone right before the final dress rehearsal, even as we, the live studio audience, grow restive.

Only overburdened assistant Bob Cratchet (John Bennett) remains, loyal despite having no health insurance and missing Christmas dinner with his family. Son Tiny Tim (Jamal Yusuf Speakes Sr.) is also sunny, although untreated injuries have halted his basketball prospects. This gives Mrs. C (Shari Washington Rhone) severe facial tics.

Enter street-smart cherub Angelica (Faith Collins), a wing-earning transplant from “It’s a Wonderful Life” by way of “The Preacher’s Wife.” Recognizing that Scrooge is one hardhearted nut with a nihilistic destiny, Angelica sends three helpings of cautionary spirits. Their visions of past, present and future crack the nut’s heart wide open, just in time for Christmas Day.

So goes “The Christmas Carols,” Walter Doty III’s tickling Tinseltown take on the Dickens classic. The Incite Theater Group production is a hip, flip mixture of a PTA pageant and a Friars Club roast. The designs are agreeably ham-fisted, and Patrick Griffin’s musical arrangements are delightful.

Writer-director Doty and choreographer Allen Avendano unleash a charming cast. Christmas Past arrives with the titular Carols (Jynnifer Washington, Gina Lange and Rhone). These clarion-voiced virtual Vandellas (minus Martha Reeves) are sublime. Matthew Swanson’s Ghost of Christmas Present shakes the house. As Scrooge’s betrayed comedy partner, Chad Stoops is a rare comic find, and everyone else is suitably earnest and/or convulsive.

McClelland hardly seems older than Greg Ferrisi’s Young Ebineezer, which adds to the satire, and he devours the emotional climax. This unpretentious spirit of seasonal frolic recommends “The Christmas Carols,” which is ideal for those humbugs whom Dickens sickens.

-- D.C.N.

“The Christmas Carols,” Upside Down Theater, 1600 Argyle Ave., L.A. Today, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10-$15. (323) 860-9810. Running time: 2 hours.