Showmag.com

They're baaack! Back from a long absence. Back from the dead (as the creative storyline tells it, that is). And, most importantly for SoCal audiences, back to the Globe. In a reincarnation as "Plaid Tidings," the Forever Plaid quartet, along with perennial and original director, Stuart Ross, landed a happy holiday sleigh in San Diego just in time to distribute a slew of musical glad tidings.

In addition to Ross, who also wrote the book and created the musical staging, credit designers Sean Fanning (Scenic), Chris Rynne (Lighting), Paul Peterson (Sound), and Deb Stein (Original costumes) for the swift, agile changes of mood that dictate this show' s lively, vivacious pace.

The stars are still the obvious Plaids. The four men in tartan - Davin Brannen as Sparky, Leo Daignault as Jinx, Jason Heil as Smudge (the only member debuting on the Globe stage) and Michael Winther as Frankie - serve up a clever, hilarious, thoroughly entertaining holiday show for grownups of all ages. Neither the tunes nor the book forbids kids, but the musical in-jokes and industry references nod to those who were harmonically conscious by the mid-60s.

That is when the scaffolding story that supports the tunes and croons begins. Knocked into the hereafter in 1964 by a bus of Catholic schoolgirls on their way to witness the Beatles' debut on the Ed Sullivan show (note the numerous cultural references), the Plaid youths find themselves back on 2010 earth. Presumably keeping up their rehearsals and enthusiasm in the intervening decades, the Plaids have a mission, which turns out to be completing their dream of performing a televised holiday show.

How and with whom they endeavor to accomplish it provides a nifty background for the scores of songs, skits, stories and medleys that follow the opening "Stranger in Paradise." Before the last vocals ring out and the bells of the realized holidays chime, the intrepid foursome delivers more than a few highlights and high jinks.

Among them: an ensemble "Life Can Be a Dream" employing long-handled toilet plungers in a "Stomp"-like variety of uses; a calypso banana scene with clever, toss-onstage props and sets; a Vaudevillian "Besame Mucho" by gymnastically lithe Jinx originator Daignault; and an illuminating litany of holiday songs and their hidden meanings by a whimsically erudite Winther. Carols will never seem the same again.

Fortunately, Plaid is still very much Plaid, thanks to the nimble minds and choreography of the foursome. The return of the Plaid is a glad "Plaid Tidings," indeed.

"Plaid Tidings" plays on The Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre stage of San Diego's The Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park through December 26. Tickets are $35-$67. Performance times: Tues-Fri at 7 p.m.; Sat & Sun at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. No performance on Christmas. For reservations: call 619-23-GLOBE or go online www.TheOldGlobe.org.