There’s more than one Christmas miracle in store for the cast and characters of Theatre Unleashed’s It’s A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play, Jim Martyka’s double-your-pleasure adaptation of the holiday perennial.

It’s December 1947 and Radio KAWL’s Michael Anderson (Dallis Seeker) has gathered together a group of friends for what may be the Los Angeles station’s swan song.

They include longtime girlfriend Melanie Peters (Liesl Jackson), who’s also the station’s second in command; old-timer Steven Pennington (David Caprita), who’s been around since the days they did shows every day in front of packed houses; glamorous, seasoned diva Claudia LaBelle (Jennifer Ashe), who’s just bought her third home on Sunset Boulevard;

 suave Hollywood lothario Clifton Logan (Michael Lutheran), who’s recently been caught in yet another home-wrecking scandal; ditzy brunette Jennifer (Corrine Glazer), who changed her last name to DaVinci “because he was like this really smart guy, like a painter or inventor or something”; star-struck country boy Mitchell Thompson (Nick Salter), who’s “just tickled pink” to be doing today’s show; character actor Victor Saul (Adam Briggs), who’s tipsy as ever and making sure the flask in his pocket keeps it that way; and a seemingly homeless Man Off The Street (Andy Justus), who’s wandered in as if from another world and ends up a last-minute recruit to play Clarence The Angel.

 Playwright Martyka takes a tried-and-true genre and makes magic with it by not only recreating a type of programming that once had an entire country glued to family radio consoles (the actors let each just-read page of dialog fall to the floor like autumn leaves, Judy provides inventive if not always recognizable Foley effects) but by creating a second storyline (Michael’s worries about his radio station parallel George’s about his family’s Building and Loan) with its own colorful cast of characters and, more importantly, its own payoff.

Director Carey Matthews (Michael/George in last year’s production) adds his own ingenious touches for 2018, first and foremost of which is to let his almost all-new cast give their own engaging takes on two distinct sets of characters.

 Fresh out of Boston’s Emerson College and bursting with Midwestern boy-next-door appeal and talent to match, Seeker anchors the production with a Michael/George Bailey that pays tribute to the Jimmy Stewart original while remaining every bit his own quietly charismatic, doubly heroic creation.

Jackson’s girl-next-door loveliness makes her the perfect choice to play Melanie/Mary, and fifth-Marx-Brother Justus’s delightfully quirky Man Off The Street is another winner.

 Much of the fun in watching Matthews’s take on Martyka’s play is seeing how his cast of deliciously delineated “real-life” characters take on “fictional” personas distinct from their own, e.g. the youthful Lutheran’s curmudgeonly Mr. Potter, Glazer’s squeaky-voiced bubblehead of a Jennifer revealing she could speak normally if she wanted to, Salter’s Southern-drawling Mitchell turning Italian at the drop of a script page, and Ashe’s Norma Desmond-esque Claudia aging way down to play six-year-old Zuzu.

It’s also a pleasure to zero in on the “business” each “radio actor” has come up with while others are at the mikes, Crafts’s klutz of a Judy doing her best Lucy Ricardo, Caprita’s Steven coaching Man Off The Street in over-the-top acting basics, Brigg’s Victor getting steadily (or unsteadily) drunker, and harmonizing songbirds Holly (Caroline Sharp), Harriet (Julia Plostnieks), and Honey (Lindsay Braverman) giving the Andrew Sisters a run for their money.

 It’s A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play looks fine on its radio station set (Ann Hurd is scenic painter), Gregory Crafts lights the production with flair, uncredited costumes give the production an appropriately period look, and Tony Gonzalez scores points for his musical arrangements.

Erin Scott, Gregory Crafts, and Beth Wallan are stage managers.

An hour and forty minutes of nostalgic fun (and maybe even a few tears before Clarence earns his wings), It’s A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play is once again a Theatre Unleashed holiday delight.

The Belfry Stage, Upstairs at the Crown, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood,
www.theatreunleashed.org

–Steven Stanley
December 13, 2018

Tags: Jim Martyka, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatre Unleashed