THEATER

Lamb's Players' 25th anniversary Festival of Christmas entry is designed to bring order out of chaos. The title of the play, It's Christmas and It's Live!, suggests exuberance as an exciting new technology emerges-in part, the story revolves around an upstart called television and its vaunted new place in the home. For some, in fact, the ending will evoke memories of live holiday spectacles on legendary programs like The Red Skelton Hour and Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows.

Those gigs had writers who cut their teeth on vaudeville, and playwright Kerry Meads gets that part of the equation. She treats us to a sugarplum with its nose out of joint, an immoderate sponsor's wife and a dancing toothbrush. Director Deborah Gilmour Smyth and choreographer Pamela Turner take it from there in a plot about a Christmas Eve storm, a snowed-in New York TV station and the national broadcast debut of a ragtag singing quartet from Dubuque.

Order does ensue in the second act, as we're treated to a pleasant medley of traditional and modern holiday favorites.

The problem is that the rendition feels out of context, because the confusion that brings the actors together features hastily drawn characters and underdeveloped interludes. It's Christmas And It's Live! is almost two different shows-and while both can point to some game performances, this broad choral landscape is often painted with a dog-eared brush.

It's just plain hard to make anything of Delmonico (Paul Eggington), the self-important director of a variety show that needs all the help it can get. For starters, he's saddled with Steve Fairfield (Cris O'Bryon), an incredibly mediocre TV star who's in it for the money and the babes. And on this night, the weather will deplete Delmonico's resources as well as his staff.

“This show is live!” he snarls at his hapless technician Frankie (Spencer Moses), his inflated ego blinding him to the simple solution before him-the lucky arrival of the singers.

But Eggington plays Delmonico as invariably set upon; the simple misplacement of a cigarette lighter prompts the same angst as a persistent technical glitch. There's thus nowhere for the character to go emotionally-and this absence of depth extends to the show's take on the new medium's auspiciousness.

TV was amazing and exhilarating in those days-its wizardry threatened to eradicate radio as the primary source of electronic communication. As the guy with the career behind him, Delmonico could speak eloquently (and uninvitedly) to this prospect. But Meads never really draws a professional background for the blathering idiot, content to let fussing and fuming define the character. Accordingly, she's missed a major opportunity to put the play in the historically important perspective it deserves.

Farce fans will enjoy the banter of the secondary characters, notably Colleen Kollar as stagehand Marcie Kramer and Ryan Drummond as quartet member Ronald Harmon. Both are unabashedly virginal, and vocally, Kollar has an absolutely precious lilt. Lorraine Lacy (Meads) and Opal Snowden (Darlene Trent), the show's administrative assistant and sponsor's wife, respectively, are strong in their interaction, although Trent isn't quite the shrew the role requires.

The remaining quartet members (Sandy Campbell, Lisa Drummond and Jon Lorenz) read well, although their exposition sometimes smacks of afterthought. It's news to us, for example, that two of the singers are romantically involved-once that becomes known, it's too late to develop the idea.

Vanda Eggington's musical arrangements are savvy and easy on the ear, but the suspicion is that the script hasn't yielded the best of the Festival shows. Its hasty story development is perhaps illustrated in a simple lapse in due diligence. It occurs fairly early in the first act, when one character grumbles about the turmoil around him as more employees are waylaid by the snow.

“I'll bet this doesn't happen to Perry Como,” he snorts.

His hunch is right. This show is set in 1952. Como's TV gig didn't debut until three years later.