Ron Wolford, left, plays a father trying to organize his extended family's Christmas Eve dinner with his daughter (Amarey Phillips) after his wifeás flight is delayed in the comedy "In-Laws, Outlaws and Other People (Who Should Be Shot)." (Staff photo / Andy Gray)

NILES — Christmas comes early to Trumbull New Theatre with the holiday comedy “In-Laws, Outlaws and Other People (Who Should Be Shot).”

Steve Franco’s play is about a family Christmas Eve gathering where everything that can go wrong does. The matriarch of the family, who normally runs the show, is trapped at the airport, leaving her less-than-capable husband and daughter in charge. Along with annoying neighbors and crazy relatives, there are two incompetent criminals who pick the house as a hideout.

“I was looking on the Samuel French website for something, and the title stuck with me,” director Terri Gilbert said. “The title got me first. (While reading it), I could picture the people in it and who could play them. I knew it would play well with our audience. I’m not into big, heavy plays. There’s not any meaning in this. This is just fun and hopefully entertains the audience for a couple hours.”

“In-Laws” has a larger cast than most contemporary shows with 15 actors plus a group of carolers, but Gilbert said she didn’t have any trouble casting the show.

“(Assistant Director) Jim Penn and I were amazed at the number of people who auditioned,” she said. “I’ve done those shows where you need five women and got six, but this one we got 30 people, and it was tough. Everybody was talented.”

The cast includes Ron Wolford, Amarey Phillips, Amy Burd, Maria Ceraolo, Tom Burd, Alyssa Bowman, Deb Nuhfer, Wayne Morlock, Dominick Spisak, Donald G. Connors, Hayes Yocum, Cadence Treich, Nina Miller, Jenna Govenor, Jim Kilgore, Lizzy Antonchak, Sandy Kilgore, Janicel Antonchak, Megan Myers and Jill Sakonyi.

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out where to put all of them on TNT’s stage. The set is two rooms of the Douglas family house, the living room and the dining room, with an implied wall dividing them. And there are scenes where nearly the entire cast has to be on one half of the stage.

“We’ve tried to make the sightlines so their faces can be seen when they’re supposed to be,” Gilbert said.

Most family holiday gatherings include a feast, and “In-Laws” is no different. A mix of real food and fake food will make up the Douglas family spread, and Gilbert credited Kate Huff with creating a realistic holiday ham and other props that kept TNT from blowing its budget by replenishing the needed items for each of the eight public performances over three weekends.

Even though the humor in the show is broad, Gilbert said she and Penn wanted to keep the performances rooted in reality.

“You don’t want to play them as caricatures,” she said. “It’s dialogue driven, and some of it has to be really quick. When you have a husband and wife spatting, you’ve got to see they’ve been together 50 years and snipping at each other all of that time.

“We cast persons in certain roles that we knew could handle the challenge without a lot of direction, and I think Jim and I have pulled the best from the newcomers.”