By Amanda Knox

Here’s how it works. One man, one set, some light and audio cues. It is a stark and solitary vessel that stands for all the characters and settings of the iconographic It’s a Wonderful Life.

A one-man show. Writers Helen Pafumi and Jason Lott were feeling ambitious, and not without reason. The story of It’s a Wonderful Life, when stripped bare, is about a good man who is desperate, cornered, and contemplating suicide. The play barely begins before the man makes his first attempt to jump from a bridge into the way on an oncoming train. But before he does, the audience relives the circumstances which led to his dire hour, on Christmas Eve no less. On that bleak, fog-shrouded bridge, the man relives it all alone, himself embodying the relevant characters. He is as if possessed. The choice to unfold the story in this way emphasizes the man’s vulnerability, and even suggests insanity.

Props, then, to the one-man behind the one-man-show, Andrew Lee Creech. Not only is he able to conjure the energy to convince, entertain, and compel for 70 minutes, all on his own, but he is brilliant at portraying unique persons through gesture, poise, inflection—and is able to flip back and forth between them in an instant. Creech’s talent alone makes a ticket to Wonderful Life a worthy early-Christmas present to oneself.

All the more props to Creech, because the one-man concept, while intriguing theoretically, is problematic in its execution. As compelling as Creech is, Wonderful Life’s seventy minutes feel long, precisely because the play is visually so stripped bare. The speed picks up when Bailey is shown his world as if he never existed—the “hell-scape” it’s called—and finally the stage is bathed in orange light as opposed to the same constant blue.

Confusing also, is whether Creech is portraying George Bailey or a man who, in 2015, empathizes with Bailey’s story to impersonate it. The only clue the audience is provided is that the distraught man flirting with the edges of the bridge as the play opens is watching It’s a Wonderful Life on his iPad. This 2015 man—in modern dress and carrying a laptop bag—remains nameless. It is uncertain whether, in the end, the audience is ever even brought back to his story, so unclear is the distinction between him and George Bailey, who is busy wishing the world and the audience a Merry Christmas until the curtain falls.

So Wonderful Life has some fundamental flaws. All the same, I don’t want to knock it, because Creech gives his all, does the very best with what he has to work with, and utterly captivates.

Wonderful Life plays December 3 – 27, 2015 at ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery (4711 California Ave SW, Seattle WA 98116). No shows December 24th and 25th. Tickets (ranging from $17 - $37.50) are on sale now and may be purchased online at www.artswest.org or by phone at 206.938.0339, or at the box office Thursday – Saturday 1:30 - 7:30 p.m. and Sunday 10:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.