Serving Some Sentiment, Straight Up or With a Twist : ‘Christmas Carol’: An SCR Institution

Some Christmas plays are heartwarming. Others are rib-tickling. Still others are time-wasting. Here are reviews of just a few of the holiday-themed theatrical offerings in Southern California.

*

Dickens Lite comes nicely packaged in South Coast Repertory’s 15th annual production of “A Christmas Carol.” The show has all the Yuletide trimmings: radiant party scenes, sentimental warmth, holiday music and, of course, a glowing tale of moral transformation.

Hal Landon Jr. is back for his perennial star turn as Ebenezer Scrooge, playing the world’s nastiest penny-pincher with the ease of a practiced meanie. His bony face, minus last year’s grizzly white beard, conveys with a single frown all we need to know about this hardhearted “miser’s miser.”

Under John-David Keller’s sharp direction, a large cast in full Victorian regalia fills out the stage with spirited performances. The magical set, abetted by atmospheric lighting and a vivid sound design, offers special effects guaranteed to entertain adults while scaring the daylights out of small children.

A Southern California institution by now, SCR’s “A Christmas Carol” ranks as a cultural rite of passage as surely as grad night at Disneyland.

* “A Christmas Carol,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Fridays, 7:30 p.m., Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, noon and 4 p.m.; matinees Dec. 20 and 22, 2:30 p.m.; Dec. 24, noon and 4 p.m. Ends Dec. 24. $22-$29. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

* ‘CAROL’ AS A BALLET

A dance interpretation of “A Christmas Carol” on TV. F8