Frank Capra’s 1946 film as a radio play makes for a new kind of holiday tradition.

The cast is wonderfully precise, and the sources of sound are clever and consistently fun to watch.

It’s December 24, it’s almost 6 p.m., and we’re only minutes from the start of KSTG Playhouse. KSTG is, of course, a radio station in Houston, you’re sitting in the audience of the KSTG Radio studio waiting for the start of the night’s coast-to-coast broadcast of It’s a Wonderful Life.

At least, that’s the world Stages is offering over at The Gordy, in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, a reimagination of the popular 1946 film, about a man at the end of his rope offered a second chance by his guardian angel, as a 1940s radio broadcast, with six actors performing all the roles while creating the sound effects in real time.