Andrea Gibbs’ new play Carol balances an affectionate, knockabout celebration of festive rituals with a bleak portrait of a woman discovering that her marriage was largely a lie – and that her now-deceased husband’s gambling debts are about to make her homeless.

Black Swan’s production is directed by Adam Mitchell and performed by an ensemble led by Sally-Ann Upton as Carol, supported by Bruce Denny, Isaac Diamond and Ruby Henaway, who take on multiple roles –including playing in a live skiffle band.

Pianist and musical director Jackson Harper Griggs also plays one of several elves recruited from the stage crew.

Mark Storen acts as MC and narrator-commentator, playing Santa as a very Aussie, working-class figure whose direct address to the audience adds to the pantomime feeling. He also provides sung interludes, complete with soaring, ironic vocals.

Sally-Ann Upton and Mark Storen in Black Swan State Theatre Company’s Carol. Photo © Daniel J Grant

The production’s tongue-in-cheek fun is boxed up in a glorious chocolate-box set from Lucy Birkinshaw, with eye-poppingly bright splashes of crimson, green, tartan, tinsel, lights and more. Though rich in texture and colour, the ingenious set is more of a fantastic interlacing than a naturalistic environment.

Carol’s house is represented by white squares (walls) and triangles (roofs) that are wheeled off after Carol loses her dwelling. The depth of the stage is bordered, opened up, and at times closed off and brought forward through the use of three curtained backdrops featuring Christmas cheer. This scenographic efficiency is joyous to watch. Even if Carol herself spends much of the play hardly shifting in outlook – resting instead in pained denial – the space around her shifts and wheels with great agility.

Despite the gorgeous scenic embellishments and enthusiastically performed music, the piece is wordy: similar in this sense to bittersweet, sketch-based televisual comedy. Scenes are short and episodic, with Carol moving between a group therapy session (dominated by Henaway as a fabulously over-the-top grieving female bodybuilder), taking phone calls from her whining and demanding son (played by Diamond, who clings to the idea of a perfect Christmas feast from his mother), and preparing to sleep in a beat-up vintage van that she illegally parks in various overnight locations.

Sally-Ann Upton, Ruby Henaway and Isaac Diamond in Black Swan State Theatre Company’s Carol. Photo © Daniel J Grant

Upton is a joy to watch in these sequences, which also include a mimed inspection of cockroach-infested flats and the filming of a video for a job application that becomes an extended confessional biography.

That said, as a premiere, the production is unsurprisingly still rather rough – though mostly not in a bad way. Even so, if you are sitting in the upper stalls, the sound is often poor and the comedic lines difficult to discern. Nor are the sightlines good from the stalls.

These are, however, minor quibbles for a performance driven by two wonderful leads. Whenever Upton/Carol and Storen/Santa share the stage, the show soars.

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the production is that there is no miraculous resolution. After being reminded of her selflessness, Carol literally drives into the sunset, but there is no suggestion of an end to her poverty or homelessness. The tinsel shines, the lights flash, but the road ahead remains merciless. The ending is at once upbeat and sobering.

Carol plays the Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre WA until 14 December.