Probably the new show with the biggest draw will be "White Christmas," at the 5th Avenue Musical Theatre. Preview performances start Saturday. The show, a big singing, dancing musical, is based on two movies: "Holiday Inn" (1942) and "White Christmas" (1954). With its familiar name and its familiar songs, the show is a marriage of something old, something new, something borrowed and -- for something blue -- there's the cheerful "Blue Skies" and the bluesy "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me."

The list of more or less familiar songs (depending on how old you are) includes "Happy Holiday," "Sisters," "How Deep Is the Ocean?" "I Love a Piano" (lifted from "Easter Parade"), "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" and, of course, the title tune.

"White Christmas," the stage musical comedy, premiered in San Francisco two years ago. The show's success tempted various theaters all over the country -- and two in England -- to try on the magic of Irving Berlin songs enhanced by lots of twinkling artificial snow.

"We have two kinds of snow," says 5th Avenue artistic director David Armstrong. "On stage, we have plastic flakes that we sweep up and use over and over again. The audience gets snowed on, too. For the auditorium snow, we use a kind of, I don't know, it's like tiny bubbles. It just falls and disappears -- no stain, no wetness, you'd never know it had ever been there. In all, we have 10 snow machines going during the final scene."

The "White Christmas" score is essentially a revival of mid-20th-century big band swing. And the story is essentially a revival of just about every musical comedy from "Floradora" (1900) to "Hello, Dolly!" (1964). As the '60s proceeded, musicals were less and less comic, as demonstrated by "Cabaret" and "Hair."

But in days of old you had your romantic couple and your funny couple. They had relationship problems. But they also grappled with an easily solved larger problem. The solution to this larger problem, like as not, was "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!" -- a formula at least as old as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in the 1939 movie musical "Babes in Arms."

In the case of "White Christmas," the problem is hard times at a holiday inn in Pine Tree, Vt., called the Holiday Inn. The demoralized owner fears its demise. But along come the romantic couple, Bob and Betty [Michael Gruber and Christina Saffran Ashford], and the funny couple, Phil and Judy [Greg McCormick Allen and Tari Kelly], who just happen to be song-and-dance performers. The inn just happens to have a barn on the premises that is used as a summer stock theater. Enough said.

The backstage musical element of "White Christmas" is not confined to Vermont venues. "We have 14 settings in all," Armstrong says. "You've got two nightclubs in New York and an appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in addition to a lot of interiors and exteriors in Pine Tree. The final scene has a beautiful woodland setting. It even has ice skaters."

Ice skaters?!

"No ice," Armstrong clarifies. "But Jamie (Rocco, the choreographer) studied old Sonja Henie movies. He translates the moves that ice skaters make into something that tap dancers can do. The tapping sounds a little like the crunching of skate blades on ice."

"White Christmas" runs at the 5th Avenue, 1308 Fifth Ave., through Dec. 20. Tickets are $20-$75; 206-625-1900, 888-584-4849, www.5thavenue.org or at the theater box office (no service charges on tickets purchased at the box office).