-The Rise and Fall of Holly Fudge' teaches that sweets to the sweet are always in season

 A discarded euphemism of disappointment and annoyed surprise, once heard among old folks, runs: "Oh fudge!" 

Mother-daughter bond renewed across identity issues.

That usage could serve as a mantra for Phoenix Theatre's new show, "The Rise and Fall of Holly Fudge." Set in 2020, it's a holiday contraption that vibrates against the rumble of the pandemic and social upheaval, as well as evolving notions of personal identity and its right to thrive.

The old-fashioned expletive has the right muttered tones of evasion with which the settled older generation confronts change. Carol, the baby-boomer lead character in Trista Baldwin's contemporary Christmas comedy, finds it necessary to hold on to the high local reputation of the confection she calls "Holly Fudge." Her spacious living room is decorated to the nines for the season, from snow globes to a dazzling tree (upstage center in Lyndsey Lyddan's set for the Phoenix production).

The candy's blue-ribbon status must be maintained as Carol gets ready for a rare visit from her daughter, after whom she's named the fudge. That turns out to be an issue for Holly, who has moved away from her East Coast hometown to Seattle. The city is associated in her mother's mind with civil unrest in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing and the growth of Black Lives Matter. 

The ensuing nationwide controversy has even staked out a spot across the street, drawing a small group of daily demonstrators. That's the only context Carol has to put on her daughter's current identity; communication between the two is freighted with the difficulty of her husband's abandonment of the family long ago. This reunion's big surprise is the show's '"guess-who's-coming-to-dinner" twist, as Holly arrives with Jordan, her female lover, a coming-out test of her mother's tolerance. To top it off, Carol's good friend and neighbor Chris seems to be launching a rivalry in the homemade Christmas sweets department. Oh fudge, indeed!

Daniella Wheelock directs the Phoenix production with an  evident surplus of whole-hearted energy, summed up in a cast led by Milicent Wright as Carol, reprising her role in the original production (Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Lowell, Massachusetts). Wright's well-known range of overflowing emotion, ranging from joy through confusion into anger and sadness, is applied well to this role. Her opening-night performance Saturday set a tone poised with comical friction against the characters played by Terra McFarland (Holly), Jaddy Ciucci (Jordan) and Emily Ristine (Chris).

Holly seemed underplayed in the first act, but that may have been one plausible way to interpret the daughter's deep uncertainty as to the best way to convey her new life and set the relationship with her mother on a new footing. After intermission, McFarland's performance grew in definition as both lover and daughter.

Ciucci projected a tempered brashness, her Jordan working to help Holly put across the identity she is

Yule-minded Mom adjusts to daughter's relationship.

eager to have Carol accept and embrace. Obstacles to that goal are formidable, and the lovers split temporarily, with Jordan and Chris, who has quarreled with the jealous Carol over holiday sweets, in exile outside, sharing a joint. That's the show's funniest scene, as the two women bond while getting high and wrestling emotionally with both seasonal tradition and damaged personal relationships. Ristine in particular ascends to the heights of ridiculous here.

There's an earlier scene, even more explosive, which ends the first act. The playwright indulges her interest in anarchic situation comedy with a food fight between Carol and Chris involving hurled and smeared fudge. We are in the tradition of untenable conflict turning into messy slapstick, summed up 70 years ago on TV by Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory on "I Love Lucy."

The sit-com comparison brings up a certain mechanical quality to entrances and exits in the script. Scenes sweep into view or fade quickly in the manner of television quick cuts. It's obvious that the rhythms of screen comedy were a huge influence in the way the playwright tells her story.

I found a few problems with the pace and technical adroitness of the show, some of which are not the playwright's fault. Why does Carol fling open the front door a few moments before Jordan and Holly appear? Is she clairvoyant? Why has Holly, who designs jewelry on the side, traveled home wearing severely distressed jeans? (Maybe noticing that contrast indicates some generational cluelessness on my part.) And then, though she's on vacation from her reporting job, at one point she goes across the street inappropriately dressed to interview the demonstrators: just irrepressible curiosity applied off-duty? 

Why do snowballs hitting the house sound like cannon shots? The sound would already be unnerving to Carol at a more plausible volume. At the other extreme, the portable music that Carol asks Holly to turn down can hardly be heard. That seems extremely fussy even for a mother as on-edge as Carol.

Finally, and I must tread softly here: Though the script suggests that Carol and Chris are roughly contemporaries, thus indicating that both their friendship and their rivalry lie within a shared peer group, Chris looks significantly younger than Carol. The Zoom fitness class that Chris leads and Carol attempts to follow is a funny scene that may be intended to signal an age difference, But it can also be explained by the fact that fitness is Chris's thing, while Carol is a novice when it comes to vigorous exercise. OK: I'm now gingerly putting that present back under the tree.

"The Rise and Fall of Holly Fudge" has many moments as dazzling and beguiling as the delight of opening a box full of gift candy. It is overall cheerful, sometimes uproariously so, despite the serious conflicts that crop up. It ends (this can hardly be a spoiler, given the season) on a note of reconciliation, even uplift. But it's also chock full of social and cultural commentary (oh, Jordan is Jewish, by the way) and the kind of pervasive busyness that we are all subject to around the holidays. 

Oh fudge! Just help yourself. 

[Photos by IndyGhostLight]