Long Beach Island is in its off-season, but Surflight Theatre in Beach Haven runs a full holiday season, and this year's mainstage show is Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn, playing November 28 through December 20. Tickets are $46 for adults and seniors and $36 for children 12 and under.

The musical follows Jim, a performer who leaves show business for a farm in Connecticut and finds he misses the stage. With Linda, a schoolteacher who can sing and dance, he turns the farmhouse into an inn that puts on a show for every holiday on the calendar, from Thanksgiving to the Fourth of July. The score is a run of Berlin standards, among them Blue Skies, Easter Parade, Steppin' Out With My Baby, Heat Wave and White Christmas. Surflight presents it by special arrangement with Concord Theatricals.

Showtimes

  • 2 p.m. matinees: November 28 and 29; December 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19 and 20
  • 7:30 p.m. evenings: November 28; December 4, 5, 12, 18 and 19

The rest of the holiday calendar

  • Holidays with The Duprees, Sunday, November 22, at 2 p.m., $47.50. Tommy Petillo, Jimmy Spinelli and Shawn Stevens return to Surflight with a program of seasonal songs and the group's own standards, including You Belong to Me and Why Don't You Believe Me.
  • Taylor Mason: Holiday Comedy for the Family, Saturday, December 12, at 11 a.m., $20. Comedy, music, improvisation and audience participation, built for children and parents together.
  • New Year's Eve Bubbly Bash with the Rave-Ons, Thursday, December 31, at 5 p.m. or 8 p.m., $49.50.

A December tradition since 1999

Surflight began as a summer theater, and its own history marks 1999 as the year it added a holiday show in December. In 2002, its December production of Miracle on 34th Street sold out seven of its ten public performances, and the theater describes that as the point when it stopped being a summer-only attraction. It became a nonprofit in 2001, when the Joseph P. Hayes Theatre, Inc. purchased the theater and the Show Place Ice Cream Parlour next door.

The theater has also opened orders for its 2027 season, which runs from summer musicals to a Jersey Tenors concert in November and another New Year's Eve show, and it takes pre-orders for subscription packages now.

Tickets and getting there

Surflight Theatre is at 201 Engleside Avenue, Beach Haven. Tickets are sold through the theater's own ticketing site, by phone at 609-492-9477, or in person at the box office; the theater says those are its only authorized sales channels and warns against third-party resellers. Off-season box office hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Buying three or more mainstage shows at once qualifies for subscription pricing by phone.

From the mainland, take Route 72 over the causeway onto Long Beach Island and follow Long Beach Boulevard south into Beach Haven to Engleside Avenue.

Sources