A Slightly Askew Perspective on Dickens’ Christmas Classic to Open at Actors Alley

Actors Alley gets into the holiday spirit with “Humbug,” a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” opening this weekend at the company’s North Hollywood theater. Jordan Charney and Arthur Hamilton adapted the work; the original score is by Hamilton, Robert Caine and Barry Fashman--and 17 actors will play the story’s multiple roles.

“The first vision you’ll see is a screaming child,” said director Robert Bowers, describing the “slightly askew” perspective on the classic tale. “I’ve tried to take away the preciousness of Dickens, the standing around and watching everyone in top hats. The idea is that these are human beings, not characters out of a book everyone knows. As the title indicates, it’s about the dismantling of everything we hold dear--then finding out how valuable that really is.”

Since the show made its debut in 1987, new music has been added, and the script has undergone some changes. “Since it’s a small stage, I’ve made it very movement-oriented,” Bower noted. “It really flies like a bat out of hell.” The results, he believes, are age-proof: “Children will get a lot out of it, though it’s not a kiddie show. And adults will like the romance--we’ve made sure there’s a lot of romance between Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit. After all, they have very many children.”

Also opening this month:

Today: Cadillac Theatre, which has been performing on the college and industrial circuits as The Second City Touring Company, changes its name and settles down at Hollywood’s Cafe Largo for a revue of topical sketches and improv.

Wednesday: A failed art gallery is the setting for “the eternal struggle between good and evil” in Bruce Dale’s “Masked Angel” at Cast-at-the-Circle in Hollywood.

Thursday: It’s not Milli Vanilli but an incredible simulation: John Epperson, billed as “the grandstanding diva of drag queens,” brings his own brand of lip-syncing to Cafe Largo in “Lypsinka.”

Thursday: L.A. Theatre Works’ New Play Readings continues its series at the Santa Monica Guest Quarters Suite Hotel with “Behind the Veil,” Lenore C. Bensinger’s contemporary retelling of the Scheherazade legend. Edward Asner, Georgia Brown, Robert Foxworth and Darrell Larson star.

Thursday: Try to follow this: A woman loves a man, who loves a man, who loves another man, who loves her in Evan Bridenstein’s “A High-Strung Quartet for Unstrung Voices,” coming to the West Coast Ensemble in Hollywood.

Friday: London City Theatre presents Howard Brenton’s controversial “Bloody Poetry”--on the lives of Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, and the forces that led to her writing of “Frankenstein”--at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

Friday: Hollywood’s igLoo Theatre plays host to “Of All the Wide Torsos in All the Wild Glen” by Paul Peditto (author of last year’s eclectic “A Fire Was Burning Over the Dumpling House One Chinese New Year”), a “fat new comedy” on vanity and liposuction.

Dec. 10: Jim Brochu’s Lotto comedy “The Lucky O’Learys” receives a two-night staged reading at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood. The cast includes Doris Roberts, Kevin McCarthy, Nancy McKeon, Conrad Bain and David Marshall Grant. Admission is free.

Dec. 10: Billed as an “off, off, offbeat romantic comedy,” Connie Monaghan’s “Love or Something Out on Highway 97” opens at Cast-at-the-Circle. John DiFusco directs, with original music by Greg Hormel of the Blasters.

Dec. 12: “Hedda Gabler,” Henrik Ibsen’s 19th-Century story of a headstrong heroine who longs to break with the restraints of her upper-class life, is revived at East West Players in Hollywood.

Dec. 12: The Los Angeles Civic Light Opera presents Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical “Cinderella” at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows play the King and Queen; “The Bold and the Beautiful” ’s Bobbie Eakes and Jeff Trachta are Cinderella and the Prince.

Dec. 15: If you prefer your Dickens in a more traditional form, Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre plays host to the 36-member Nebraska Theatre Caravan’s production of “A Christmas Carol.”