Production values are low but the laughter quotient is high in writer-director Paul Storiale’s Dysfunctional Family Christmas, 70 minutes of wacky 1980s sitcom-style fun.

Married-with-children Dean and Joanne Logan (Curtis Bechdholt and Allyson Sereboff) are about to celebrate their first Christmas in years with all three of their adult offspring under the same roof before sending the kids’ detestable grandfather off to a nursing home and heading south to Florida with the money they’ll have pocketed from selling the Logan family home.

Unfortunately for all concerned, a check of the rotten old man’s bedroom reveals the inconvenient truth: Grandpa Logan (special guest Ernie Charles) had died in his sleep.

“How could he do this to us!” cries an outraged Joanne, who’s not about to let a long-awaited family reunion be ruined if the kids find out about Grandpa.

Daughter Christine (Taylor Renee Garber) is, after all, bringing home home her new boyfriend for the very first time, middle child Adam (Aaron Castle) will finally tell his PFLAG-member parents he’s gay, and the always overlooked Braden (Jackson Adams) is coming home too.

In other words, there’s no way they’re calling 9-1-1 until the day after Christmas at least, so into his wheelchair Grandpa must go, and from there to whatever hiding place Dean and Joanne can find.

What Mom and Dad haven’t counted on is Christine’s intention to not only marry Jew-of-her-dreams Thomas (Yisrael Dubov) but to convert to Judaism as well; Adam to arrive with a decidedly opposite-sex girlfriend (Isabella Oliveira as Katie) on his arm (“I love you Adam!” “Oh, Katie, I like you too!”); and Braden to even show up at all, because face it, when your parents miss your New York stage debut, why bother?

Complicating matters considerably is Grandpa’s Southern-fried lady friend Abigail Brackett (A.J. Gardner), not only the crackpot busybody from across the street but an expert at backhanded compliments to boot. (“You’ll have to let me know about what second-hand website you got that from!” she gushes when she sees Joanne’s admittedly tacky blouse.)

As for poor dead Grandpa, when he’s not being wheeled from closet to bedroom and back to closet again on the pretense that he’s only suffering from a “48-hour stroke,” he’s getting impersonated by Dean, Braden, and Thomas in assorted disguises ranging from head-to-toe blanket to Santa suit and beard.

If all this sounds like three-part episode of Married With Children, Storiale’s script does indeed capture that sitcom’s irreverent tone and occasionally crass humor, and though performances can verge rather far into over-the-top territory, there’s no denying the virtually non-stop laughs they engender.

It helps too that Storiale’s script gives his cast plenty of snappy one-liners to work with, more than a few of them at poor forgotten Braden’s expense. (“I told you we’re not going to spend hundreds of dollars just to see you off-Broadway. When you’re on Broadway we’ll give it some thought.” “I want to show you what we did to your room! We turned it into an office!”)

Bechdholt and Sereboff make for the most outrageously self-centered of parents, Castle charms as the insistently not gay Adam and Oliveira as the deliciously vapid girlfriend he can’t wait to show off, Dubov makes for an engaging Thomas, and though Braden may be his parents’ least favorite son, cute-as-a-button Adams’s performance is a winner.

Best of all are Gardner’s scrumdiddlyumptiously outrageous Mrs. Brackett and Garber’s girl-next-door lovely Christine, who somehow manages to be subtle,real, and utterly winning amongst all the madness.

Dysfunctional Family Christmas deserves a more professional looking production design than the one it’s been given at North Hollywood’s Sherry Theater. (Complicating matters at the performance reviewed was a last-minute lighting mishap that bathed the entire cast in shades of yellow throughout the show.)

Still, I can’t say I’ve laughed any harder or more consistently all holiday season than at Dysfunctional Family Christmas. In that respect, it works quite functionally indeed.

Sherry Theater 11052 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. .
www.DefianceTheatreCompany.com

–Steven Stanley
December 20, 2019

Tags: Defiance Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theater Review, Paul Storiale, The Sherry Theater