A Flight From ‘Star Trek’ to Scrooge

If you know him as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” get ready for Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge.

This weekend, the British actor is taking his one-man rendition of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” to the campus of UC Santa Barbara--followed by a single show Saturday at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theatre.

“I needed to taste a live audience again,” he said of the stage detour. “For the longest time, I’ve been doing film and television, and I was starting to suffer withdrawal. A solo piece seemed to be the simplest solution.”

The former Royal Shakespeare Company member hooked into Dickens’ novel a few years ago while on location for the film “Lady Jane.” It was a part of his “survival kit” for the long stretches off-camera.

“It was one of those things I thought I knew, but I’d never read,” he confessed. “I didn’t expect to get very far, but I devoured it in a sitting. It’s a mini-masterpiece, really, so much more than the sleigh bell and fur images. In 1985, I performed it with my old church in the north of England, and it really got under my skin.”

In addition to last year’s performance of “A Christmas Carol” at Wadsworth, Stewart has developed a collection of programs that he tours throughout Southern California. “Some are lectures, some are recitals,” he said. “One is a lecture and investigation of the character of Shylock in ‘Merchant of Venice.’ Another is called ‘Uneasy Lies Ahead,’ based on the multiplicity of kings, bosses and party leaders--everyone from King David to Lenin--I’ve played.”

Why do casting directors always associate him with those starchy roles? “It must be the sweetness of my nature,” he said, laughing. “Actually, my career has gone in blocks of typecasting. At one time, I was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s first choice for low comic.”

THE GIRLS FROM THE BEACH: It’s a circus motif for Diane Driscoll and Angie Ventresca’s “Life and Other Death-Defying Acts” (on Tuesday night only at the Zephyr in Hollywood), the brainchild of a group of “China Beach” assistants.

“We have five actors and two musicians--and clowns, magicians, knife throwers and a stiltwalker,” said Capri Darling, who’ll play four different characters in the quartet of scenes. Originally intended as a showcase, the piece has developed into a full production--courtesy of their “China Beach” bosses: “The producers are backing us, giving us notes, letting us use their prop department and lending us costumes from the studio.”

But don’t look for any Vietnam-era subject matter. “Our show has nothing to do with ‘China Beach.’ ”

THEATER BUZZ: Patti D’Arbanville and Nick Mancuso will star in the Jan. 11 premiere of Daniel Faraldo’s “How Does it Feel?” at the Gnu Theatre in North Hollywood . . . The Dec. 11 “Because We Care” AIDS holiday benefit at the Taper features 15 cast members from “The Phantom of the Opera” in “A Tribute to the Music of Leonard Bernstein,” plus Brian Kerwin’s reading of Lanford Wilson’s “A Poster of the Cosmos.”

Dana Elcar has announced the upcoming season at his Santa Paula Theatre Center. Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday” bows Feb. 9, followed by John Patrick Shanley’s “Italian American Reconciliation” (which, coincidentally, Patti D’Arbanville played at the Gnu a couple of years back), Victorian Sardou and Emile de Nagac’s 17th-century farce, “Let’s Get a Divorce,” a new Tina Howe play, and the musical “The Apple Tree,” with stories by Mark Twain and Jules Feiffer.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Scottish playwright Sharman Macdonald’s mother-daughter drama, “When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout,” recently had its American premiere at South Coast Repertory. Simon Stokes directs Elizabeth McGovern and Dana Ivey.

Said The Times’ Dan Sullivan: “If this were a Beth Henley play, there would be recriminations all over the lot, and a final family embrace. But (central characters) Morag and Fiona prefer to sit on their anger . . . This is realistic, and probably very Scottish, but it’s also frustrating for the viewer who likes people in plays to make breakthroughs.”

In the Orange County Register, Thomas O’Connor applauded “a remarkable first effort--apparently an autobiographical one. Macdonald’s memories shiver with chilling, tactile vividness; she writes in a lyric shorthand that draws resonant music from the clipped burrs of Scottish idiom.”

From Clifford Gallo in the Los Angeles Reader: “While the play’s themes of independence and maternal conflict are familiar, Macdonald handles them with authenticity and quirky charm, revealing subtleties a less astute playwright would have neglected.”