A Mixed Package of One-Acts in ‘Unwrapped’

“Unwrapped,” four original Christmas-inspired one-acts by the Copperview Theatre Company at the Actors Circle, is a mixed bag with two disappointments, one serviceable offering and a genuine treasure.

The evening’s unfortunate opener, Mel Toltz’s “A Very Sherry Christmas,” unsuccessfully blends strident farce with a bastardized facsimile of a Noel Coward play--sans the elegance, plot plausibility or comic timing. The final offering, Patrick Rowan’s “A Good Space on the Board,” a tale of Christmas bonding between an embittered old woman and an orphaned delivery boy, caricatures the plight of loneliness and closes the evening on a note of forced sentimentality.

Sandwiched in between are “A Quarter to Christmas,” written and staged by Anthony Tanner, and “Speed the Bough,” Stephen Falk’s dead-on parody of David Mamet’s style.

*

Tanner’s purposely elliptical demi-play, which features the chance interaction between a couple of intensely eccentric strangers, covers all-too-familiar territory. However, Tanner stages his piece tautly and gets dynamically quirky performances from Keri Marrone and Todd Buteaux as the oddballs in question.

But best is “Speed the Bough,” a rib-tickling holiday hoot that features the crackling direction of P.J. Flynn and a beautifully deadpan cast. While roasting Mamet to a turn, Falk audaciously sends up Scientology in this hilarious, no-holds-barred comic treat. Todd Anderson slams in body-blow laughs as a misogynistic tot whose Dr. Denton’s conceal a precocious capacity for cryptic moral philosophizing.

* “Unwrapped,” Actors Circle Theatre, 7313 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 23. $10. (213) 851-2075. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.