Times Square Angel

London premiere of Charles Busch's hardboiled Christmas fantasy.

New York, 1948. Irish O'Flanagan is the tough as nails, red-headed headliner of the Club Intime. A lifetime of hard knocks has left her bitter and with a chip on her shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. In the spirit of fantasies such as "A Christmas Carol", "It's a Wonderful Life" and "The Bishop's Wife", an angel in the form of a sexy vaudeville magician named Albert comes down to show Irish that the path she's been taking is leading her to disaster. He takes her on a journey that reveals that in the next twenty-four hours, she'll be killed in a botched kidnapping of a corrupt senator's beautiful daughter, Valerie, engineered by the notorious gangster, Chick LaFountain. Irish rejects this look into her future but when indeed everything comes to pass, she desperately tries to no avail to change her fate. At the moment when Chick LaFountain is about to shoot Irish for real, Albert makes a deal with the Lord to save her life. However, his good deed must be an anonymous one. Like Scrooge, Irish has a chance to begin again. She saves Valerie and with the help of her devoted longtime admirer, a busboy named Eddie, and her faithful maid, Peona, has Chick sent up the river. Irish and her friends go caroling in Times Square, and for one brief moment, she remembers the wonderful gift that Albert the angel has given her. He blows her a kiss and she feels it against her cheek. Albert is able to return to Heaven knowing Irish will be all right.