The Coterie lights up Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

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If adorable false-nose nuzzling is at the top of your Christmas list, save an evening for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Musical. The Coterie Theatre’s production, adapted from the 1964 television special, is, in a word, charming. It’s also, this season, one of the only places where you’ll get to see men in clingy velour reindeer suits doing jazz squares.

You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The stop-motion Rudolph has always been one of my favorite holiday traditions. I suppose I should be bothered that it was the brainchild of an ad exec, but every ounce of humbug in my body is too busy being beamed like a big, festive hate-laser at The Christmas Shoes to care. Commercial or no, Rudolph is a classic for a reason, its sentimentality tempered with just enough silliness to make it go down smooth.

The script, adapted for the stage by Robert Penola, maintains all of the cheer of the TV version. “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Silver and Gold” are still here, as are the swaying raccoon marionettes. Even the visual style is consistent: The Coterie’s designers borrow from animation’s bright colors and cuddly forms. Flat snowdrifts puddle on trees like cartoons, and ice peaks and evergreens alike look as though they’ve been formed from modeling clay.

The cuteness is almost too much to bear when Ron Lackey shuffles out as narrator Sam the Snowman. With his legs masked in an enormous snowball, Lackey is forced to patter across the landscape in tiny stop-motion steps. Luckily, Lackey is as affecting as he is adorable, with a voice as rich as eggnog and a stage presence that soothes like whale song in the key of Burl Ives. At Friday’s performance, even the squirmiest kids in the audience jumped to rapt attention whenever he spoke or sang.

The rest of the cast captures the requisite holiday frenzy. Christopher Carlson is an uncanny Hermey the Elf, with an appropriately nasal voice, energetic dance moves and expressive features. He and Tony Pulford (as Rudolph) play well off each other, and their voices blend particularly well in “We’re a Couple of Misfits.” Lexi Morris gives clear voice to Clarice, the plucky young doe playing reindeer games with Rudolph’s heart. Jake Walker plays it safe with Boss Elf, mimicking his TV counterpart right down to the scansion, but it’s a successful dupe: The elf foreman earns big laughs in the show, and Walker’s unblinking delivery and stiff-limbed gait compound the humor.

Logan Black masters his gleeful prospector cackle as Bumble-busting Yukon Cornelius, but is even more effective in a smaller role. As Coach Comet, the gruff reindeer flight instructor, Black pounces on his young recruits with a voice plucked from a 1940s radio hour.

Zachrey York has a fine singing voice, but he seemed tired at Friday’s performance, his Santa a little less rich and robust than we might expect. His elves, however, make strong impressions. The chorus of elves rotates from night to night, but Friday’s cadre was all energetic and capable (with Zoe London especially convincing).

Rudolph’s scene changes come fast and furious, and director Jeff Church does the best he can to differentiate them in the small space. Still, the set can’t help but feel crowded in full-cast numbers (the facile choreography is a symptom, not a cause), and the staging of what should be a tense climax (the confrontation in the Bumble cave) is a bit confused.

These are perhaps necessary sacrifices, however, in service of a simpler show: Stage magic requires stagehands, puppets need puppeteers, and the Coterie has no compunction about letting the wires show.

Many of the elves and reindeer double as snoken puppeteers, a sort of white-costumed version of the kuroko from Japanese kabuki theatre. Dressing the actors in white allows them to fade into the snowy backdrop as they manipulate puppets, move scenery and simulate special effects; watching them bear elves aloft on a manpowered “wind” is a production highlight.

Costume designer Georgianna Londré Buchanan has perhaps the most difficult task, but each of her twinkling elf skirts is as dazzling as the next. From the velour reindeer suits and peach-fuzz pelts to Sam the Snowman’s comic festoonery, Buchanan’s costumes are some of the production’s most amusing elements. The reindeer heads, admittedly, take some getting used to — the actors’ faces are left exposed underneath the stuffed snouts (the right call), but the effect is sort of totem pole-ish, doe eyes stacked on doe eyes.

Still, the heads are just one more cartoonish touch on a winking, whimsical ride. The Coterie’s Rudolph is cocoa on a chilly day, a zippy celebration of nitwits and nostalgia that will make you long to be young enough to sit on the floor with the kids. Loath as I am to recommend recycling, I could get used to this musical as a Coterie tradition.

But for the love of Christmas, put those bucks in Spanx next time. Nothing kills kiddish wonder quite like boxer-brief panty lines.