Tom Andrews is George Bailey, at least in this town, and he plays it brilliantly for the fourth time in Cygnet Theatre’s annual It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.

The show, directed by Sean Murray, has been extended through New Year’s Eve at Cygnet’s new digs in Old Town.

You remember George, who gives up his dreams of college, world travel and doing “something big” in order to help the little people in his home town of Bedford Falls, and is then saved from suicidal depression by a rookie angel trying to earn his wings.

On Murray’s visual smorgasbord of a set, the actors assemble for a ’40s radio presentation of the story made famous in the 1946 film. This show is an adaptation of the original radio script, complete with period commercials and jingles.

The excellent new member of the cast this year is Amanda Sitton as Mary. Sitton is not only a fine actor, but her tall, thin frame looks great in Shirley Pierson’s period costumes.

The terrific returning cast includes Tim West as Clarence the angel (and others); Melissa Fernandes as vamp Violet (and others); Jonathan Dunn-Rankin as mean old Mr. Potter; Veronica Murphy as George’s mother, and local favorite David McBean, the man of a hundred expressions, who vamps his way through several disparate roles.

But the real star of this show is Foley artist Scott Paulson, who plays a harp and bangs on, shakes or tickles a collection of other items to create the sound effects needed to tell the story. The show is worth seeing just for those, and for the goofy commercials for Kreml Hair Tonic, for gents whose hair resembles “a dried-out bird’s nest” and Lux Toilet Cake (soap), “cleaning up the U.S.A.” Ah, those were the days.

Cygnet’s more expansive new theater puts the audience at a greater distance, so that it no longer seems like the sound effects are being created right next to you. But that’s a minor quibble.

It’s a wonderful life – and a wonderful show at Cygnet this year.

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play plays through Dec. 31, at Cygnet Theatre. Shows Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-337-1525 or visit www.cygnettheatre.com.

One-liners fly fast and furious out of the mouths of charming (albeit proudly stereotypical) characters in Paul Rudnick’s The New Century, a compilation of three one-acts that play like stand-up. Rudnick tacked on a fourth section naming the show and bringing all the characters together; the unifying theme is that being gay is okay.

The best are the first two segments (“Pride and Joy” and “Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach”), which have been performed individually in New York before. Clearly drawn from Rudnick’s experience (gay and Jewish), they tell a truth born of familiarity.

In “Pride and Joy,” Jewish mama Helene (Dana Hooley) clearly doesn’t understand why all three of her children turned out, shall we say, unusual, but she is here to congratulate herself for being “the most accepting, most tolerant and most loving mother of all time.”

Daughter Leslie is lesbian; Veronica (formerly Ronnie) is transsexual, and “my son the doctor” David is gay, with leather and coprophilia fetishes. Hooley’s Helene uses the right amount of lightness and self-protective flippancy in an attempt to cover an inescapable undercurrent of sadness and incomprehension.

Mr. Charles (Phil Johnson), a flaming but fading queen, is “currently of Palm Beach” after being tossed out of New York for being “too gay,” i.e., succumbing to “nellie breaks.” Now, wearing those awful pastels and a vaguely blond rug that one character calls a “hat,” he hosts a late-night TV talk show called “Too Gay,” slotted in between “Adult Interludes” and “Stretching with Sylvia.”

Mr. Charles is outrageous, over the top, extreme, very funny and yes, stereotypical, and Johnson provides the right amount of defiant flamboyance to make it work and pay tribute to the nellie gays.

After intermission, the third segment (“Crafty”) moves into what seems to be uneasy territory, and the last needs rewrite or outright replacement.

Barbara Ellen from Decatur (Jacquie Wilke) says she worked her way out of depression with crafts, and has created over 512 items from doorknob covers to toilet paper caddies to a hand-crocheted tuxedo for a toaster. She describes (and shows) them with great enthusiasm, but the sadness that brought her to New York is never far from the surface: her gay son died of AIDS there.

Wilke does a terrific job of communicating her character’s passion for this art form, but Rudnick seems to be laughing at rather than with his character. Comments like “When I pick up a crochet hook or a staple gun I’m tingling” and mishearing the news of 9/11 as “muslin terrorists” made me wince.

The last segment (“The New Century”) is by far the weakest, bringing all characters together at the newborn wing of the hospital. It feels tacked on, unlikely and unnecessary.

This is no Jeffrey or I Hate Hamlet, but on the upside, it is loaded to the gills with many funny one-liners.

The New Century plays through Jan. 2, 2010 at Diversionary Theatre. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Sunday at 2 & 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-220-0097 or visit www.diversionary.org.