A Christmas Story Wilton Playshop, 15 Lovers Lane, Wilton. Fri, 7:30 p.m.; Sat, 5 p.m.; Sun, 2 p.m. through Dec. 21. (203) 762-7699, www.wiltonplayshop.org

Think you can stand one final holiday tale of hope and renewal? Here's the premise: The director of a Christmas play has to tell the cast that the play has been cancelled. Half of the actors are kids and, by shutting down the show, the director is saying something as disheartening as "Santa won't be coming this year."

That director was Rich Mancini a year ago. Mancini had he learned the Board of Directors at the Wilton Playshop was pulling the plug on his production of A Christmas Story. Rather than deliver the news by telephone or e-mail, Mancini waited until the rehearsal that was intended to be the first read-through of the play. “It was a pretty emotional night,” he remembers. “It was, if you will, like we had just 'shot our eye out.'”

After seven decades, the Wilton Playshop had fallen into a slump. Volunteerism, the lifeblood of any community theater, had been dwindling for 10 seasons. Shows were routinely delayed or cancelled. And the theater had ended the previous year $25,000 in debt.

Hope arrived in the colorfully named Zelie Pforzheimer. Before she married, Pforzheimer had acted professionally under the marquee-friendlier moniker of Zelie Daniels. Though she still had a soft spot for the stage and occasionally appeared in the Playshop's amateur productions, Pforzheimer had devoted most of her time in Wilton to raising three sons and helping her husband open a string of Barcelona Wine Bar restaurants.

But Pforzheimer could see the Playshop had fallen on hard times, so she offered to head the Board. “They were very ready to step down and turn over the reigns to someone else,” she recalls.

Pforzheimer did not realize how big a problem she was being asked to tackle. “The condition of the building was a complete surprise,” she says. “We knew that it needed to be cleaned and organized. But we didn't know that it was structurally unsound.” Building inspectors turned up rotting ceiling beams and an entire outside wall that was in danger of collapsing due to water damage. The price tag for the needed repairs and refurbishing was estimated at about 10 times the theater’s existing debt. It looked as if the Wilton Playshop might close for good.

Fortunately, Pforzheimer had gathered an energetic team of like-minded individuals on the new Board. “Every time I met someone that I thought would good to tap, I asked if they'd be interesting in helping me,” she says.

And several local businesses came to the Playshop’s aid. Mercer Builders, a construction company, built a patio, brought the steps on the side of the building up to code and told Pforzheimer, “Pay me when you can pay me,” she recalls. The Rotary Club and Our Lady of Fatima church also lent a hand.

The local acting community helped, as well, by staging several benefits. “Our colleagues at Westport Community Theatre invited us to do [A Christmas Story] for their ETC reading program, with proceeds going to the rebuilding effort,” says Mancini. Actor Edward Herrmann even took time off from narrating all of those History Channel documentaries to perform a one-man show about painter Julian Alden Weir to raise funds. .

By early fall, much of the work was done — about $165,000 worth — and Mancini was given the go-ahead to stage A Christmas Story. “We were fortunate that none of the kids had gotten so big that they appeared too old for their parts,” he says. The play opened on Dec. 5.

“The big to-do list is pretty much done,” Prozheimer says, although “the kitchen needs to be ripped out and redone and we would like to replace the bathrooms."

On the day she was interviewed, Pforzheimer was busily doing some last-minute painting of the play’s scenery. “We were here until three last night and back again at nine this morning,” she says with a comic sigh. Why isn't that surprising in the least?