Mixed Bag of Gifts

God knows what it is about the holiday season that makes theaters from Chatsworth to Long Beach concoct Christmas-themed shows. Under the weight of gift shopping, cooking and handling relatives, do audiences really want their entertainment to be holiday-themed, too?

(Maybe it’s just too deep into December for me to review such shows with good humor. I have shopping to do.)

Well, at least in “Yuletidings!,” at the Road Theatre, there are no elves and no talk of room at the inn, and there are some good laughs.

There is an odd reindeer who operates as a sort of emcee. Rudy (Joseph Corri), a Rat Pack-ish version of Rudolph, tells lame-pun jokes and sings a little between Elias Stimac’s six short plays. It’s hard to tell how much of his material is scripted, but Corri delivers too many lines halfheartedly, as if he knows they’re lumps of coal.

The plays themselves, all written by Elias Stimac, are a mixed bag.

In “Wonderful Life,” Ben (Peter Suarez) is stranded in Cleveland on Christmas Eve, and he can’t get on an overbooked flight back to New York. An airline employee, Trinity (Stephanie Lesh), comes by his hotel room to deliver a book he left behind.

Lesh, who also directed the program, has a certain charm as the awkward yet aggressive Trinity, a young woman who won’t quite take no for an answer, but isn’t quite sure what to do when she gets a yes. Suarez, playing a blocked novelist, recites a few too many writing cliches. But he smooths out what could be a rough transition from annoyed customer to interested paramour.

In the monologue “Salvation,” Shauna Bloom is a member of the Salvation Army, ringing her bell for spare change outside Sam’s 97-cent Emporium--not the place to get much in donations. The character is an odd bird, funny and direct, defiant in her support of the army, which turned her life around.

Lia Chapman is completely underused in the monologue that follows, “Merry Kwanzaa,” a postcard of a play that sketches the origins of this African American holiday. Fortunately she reappears in multiple roles in “The Twelve Dates of Christmas.” She gets some of the biggest laughs of the whole evening as Emilee, the date who communicates everything by singing show tunes.

The final play of the evening, “Twelve Dates” stars playwright Stimac as Pete, a Drew Carey type who works in the personnel department. Desperate for a date to his corporate Christmas party, he joins a dating service to find a companion. Predictably, the dates go terribly, and the women get increasingly bizarre.

The four actresses who share the roles ham it up. Bloom, for instance, goes from the pregnant Connie who declares her newfound independence from men on her first date with Pete, to Saratina, who can’t go to the Christmas bash because she has to practice twirling the baton for her family talent show.

Two other shorts weren’t as successful. “A’Carolling” has three women--one pushy, one slutty, one geeky--on their way to sing in front of a house where three men live. The depths to which ringleader Wanda (Lara Vickman) will sink to meet men--stalking, for example--are amusing, but the skit takes too long to get to a weak payoff.

In “Three Wise Guys,” two of the kings get lost on their way to find the baby Jesus, while the third goes ahead. Gaspar (Suarez) and Melchior (Derek Goes) spend their brief time on stage getting paranoid and yelling at each other. In one of the skits’ typical jokes, Melchior unrolls a scroll that says “Thomas Bros. Guide to Bethlehem.”

Ba-dum-dum.

The Road did a workshop production of “Yuletidings!” last year and deemed it to be a worthy candidate for an annual tradition. With the possible exception of “Twelve Days,” the show doesn’t seem to have the kind of jokes that are helped by repeated viewings. But who knows. Thousands tune in to “It’s a Wonderful Life” year after year, too.

BE THERE

“Yuletidings!” at the Road Theatre, inside the Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Sunday. $12. (818) 761-8838.