Enter the Guardsman, the international musical comedy currently making the regional rounds, will spend its Christmas in California with the San Jose Repertory. There, the Craig Bohmler-Scott Wentworth Marion Adler musical opens Dec. 15 for a run through Jan. 7. Director playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag (The Magic Fire) directs.

Set in Vienna at the turn of the century, Enter the Guardsman tests faithfulness and love with dashing charm. When a theatre's leading actor begins to feel that his marriage to the theatre's leading lady is losing its passion, he decides to offer his tempermental wife an irresistable propisition - love from a handsome guardsman mad for her - but played by himself, of course, in a ruse crafted by a playwright and the theatre's staff. Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar's classic romantic farce The Guardsman is the basis for Enter the Guardsman.

The husband and wife team of Wentworth and Adler also collaborated with Bohmler on the Barrymore-winning Gunmetal Blues. Bohmler is currently at work on Mountain Days - The Story of John Muir, which premiered at the Willows/Pavillion Theatre Company.

David Ledingham and Suzan Hanson (Master Class) star as the Actor and the Actress. The Playwright is Peter Van Norden, Meg Mackay is A Dresser, Laruent Giroux (Dancin', Chicago) is A Wig Maker, Amy McAlexander is A Wardrobe Mistress and colin Thomson is An Assistant Stage Manager.

Designing the show are Kent Dorsey (sets, lighting), B. Modern (costumes) and Jeff Mockus (sound). Musicla staging is by Dottie Lester-White. Tickets are $37-$17. The San Jose Repertory Theatre performs in the Sobrato Auditorium at 101 Paseo de San Antonio. For reservations, call (408) 367-7255. The San Jose Repertory is on the web at http://www.sjrep.com.

— By Christine Ehren