'Wonderful Life' goes back to radio days in Gulfshore Playhouse

"It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play" stokes a Yule log on the fire for Gulfshore Playhouse with a hearty crackle — a cellophane crackle, to be exact.

That artificial escort into an audial landscape drives this bundled tale taken from the feel-good Frank Capra holiday film. The Gulfshore Playhouse production has picked up Joe Landry's 1996 re-interpretation of it as a radio play, with the actors taking multiple roles and creating the sound effects onstage: car horns, clanging bottles, footsteps in the snow, slamming doors. 

The live radio audience for this broadcast is the audience at Norris Community Center. We get instructions from the announcer. We have applause signs timed to flash at appropriate times. There are comic visual-audial disconnects for us that director Peter Amster and his cast have richly mined: As one actor creates frantic footsteps in retreat, drumming shoes on a wood surface, the depicted character actually is sauntering away from the mic and up the steps.

For those who adore "It's a Wonderful Life," the radio-play overlay is frosting on a fruitcake. You will weep with Jeffrey Binder as George when he stands distraught at the bridge, ready to jump. You'll beam at Keri Safran's  6-year-old Zuzu voice proclaiming the sound of a bell means one of God's angels has just earned wings.

Amster and his cast also give you a lot of reason to love the job they do. All of these actors are introduced onstage as known radio or film commodities, even if those personas are fleeting, buried under the story. And within the story, they're nearly in perpetual motion.

Brian Owen in particular, sails through head-spinning mic moments as:

• George Bailey's absent-minded uncle Billy, who loses $8,000 of the bank's money at a perilous time
• His daredevil baby brother, Harry, whose own heroism depends on George having saved him from drowning in his youth
• Gruff-cop Bert
• The angry husband of a teacher who has caught George's wrath
• A bar bouncer
• Most important, journeyman angel Clarence Odbody

Read:Naples production instills radio days magic in 'It's a Wonderful Life'

Photos::Gulfshore Playhouse takes on "It's a Wonderful Life" as a radio play

We can barely keep up with Owen as he whirls from role to role — regirding himself in a new costume hat or glasses — in perfect character and with impeccable timing. (In fact, Clarence executes an actual twirl for George at one point, and both Binder and Owen nearly lost their composure over it last Saturday; we loved it).

Support is everything to this play, and James Leaming and Keri Safran, who handle a handful of roles each, are also rock solid. Only in his spot as emcee does Leaming lose a word or two; however, as the wicked Mr. Potter, slumlord intent on sucking up all of Bedford Falls, Leaming has a wonderfully oily manner and the most malevolent laugh we've heard. And Safran can drop 20 years to purr like a first-grade princess or project the hard edge of a misspent life on Violet in George's vision of life in Beford Falls had he not been born.

Andrea Prestinario, in the role of Mary Bailey, is spared much of the side character work, but is kept busy, apart from her scenes, at the sound effects table; she handles a good deal of its work.

Binder alone gets to concentrate on the George Bailey role, that of a man who runs full throttle but true to his principles in a town where he is the rare rampart against Potter. Occasionally, we worry Binder's depiction ratchets over the top, but then we remember wanting to dump ice water over Stewart a few times in the film, too.

For those afflicted with 100th-time ennui with "Wonderful Life," the special effects are welcome fortification to the familiar script. Most hilariously done are the bar scenes, in which all the supporting actors clank bottles and create rumbling sounds of testosterone talk.

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Enough of them are unclear to the viewer, however, that we wondered: Would switching those vintage mics to the second level and handling props on the first have offered more recognition. Who knows what puffy piece Owens blew through to create the sound of a cigarette lighter? Or that that snowy crunch under the pounded shoes was cornflakes? 

It's enough of a quibble that we wouldn't recommend the play for viewers younger than middle-school age, who might want more clues. Still, clever touches abound, like the "on-air" commercial jingles, with actors singing harmony Amster wrote himself. There's even a staged power outage. Stay in your seats, folks. 

Kristen Martino's scenic design gives a fun, retro, Daily Planet look to the studio, and Devon Painter's costumes are a vintage closet excursion.

We're only missing hot chocolate and cookies to make this the quintessential return to an era where the good are rewarded with love. And wings.  

Harriet Howard Heithaus covers arts and entertainment for the Naples Daily News/naplesnews.com. Reach her at 239-213-6091.

'It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play'

What: Gulfshore Production production of Joe Landry's adaptation of "It's a Wonderful Life" to a radio stage, with audience

Where: Norris Community Center, 755 Eighth Ave. S., Naples 34102

When: Through Dec. 29; 3 and 8 p.m. performances Saturdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. performances Wednesdays through Fridays and two Tuesday performances 8 p.m. Dec. 3 and 17; there is a $35 preview at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15

Tickets: $22-$70; $170 VIP