"Island of Misfit Toys": a defective but ultimately fun holiday tale for grown-ups

Let us be blunt about the new holiday comedy "Island of Misfits," by local playwright Amy Boyce Holtcamp. It's a mess.

It is also, periodically, a hilarious mess. And you'll just need the patience to wait for the doldrums to give way to some inspired zaniness.

Introduced by Next Stage at Richard Hugo House, "Island of Misfits" has video narration by a chatty animated snowman, and a mind-numbing opening scene that's about as exciting as watching ice melt on a driveway.

The show is a lot more engaging once Holtcamp's off-kilter sense of 1960s surrealism takes over this mock-TV holiday special. That occurs once the odd trio of aggrieved African-American puppeteer Freddie Douglas Black (Geoffery Simmons), jaded female photographer Snowflake Jones (Kaitie Warren) and officious TV producer Herbie Pickle (Patrick Allcorn) set off for Canada together, on that stock gambit: the odd-fellows road trip.

The rationale for this dead-of-winter journey (in that rolling '60s cliché, a VW bus) is to help Freddie escape Vietnam War military service.

And along the route north, Holtcamp's gift for satirical incongruity revs up, as the threesome encounter assorted sinister and wacky '60s types, aptly garbed in Sarah Day's period costumes.

In an all-night diner, they collide with a right-wing cop, Officer Bumble (Aaron Allshouse) whose long list of peeves includes draft dodgers and all things Canadian — even Canadian Club whiskey and Canada Dry ginger ale.

They also meet up with a weirdly harmless group of KKK members, and some zoned-out hippies out of central casting.

Even the latter are quite funny, however, when Mark Jared Zufelt's staging switches into high gear, with winning comic players Lisa Viertel, Chris Bell and Aaron LaPlante covering the nutty cameos.

The lead characters also come into their own eventually.

Simmons' brooding Freddie livens up a bit. As Snowflake, the ultra-deadpan Warren executes a choice piece of slapstick in high heels and Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat. And Allcorn channels the spirit of the late Charles Nelson Reilly in his dandy turn as an endearingly ridiculous closet case.

Playwright Holtcamp's skewering of the identity politics of the 1960s holds no big surprises, but it can be a stitch.

What's frustrating is the tiresome early setup for later laughs, and the turgid stretches where the comic pacing slows to a crawl. Within "Island of Misfits" there's a deliciously daffy holiday tale for grown-ups. But you have to trudge through a few snowbanks to get to it.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com