A Dickens of a Time

If Charles Dickens were alive today . . . imagine the royalties.

His “A Christmas Carol” has long been one of the greenest evergreens in the theatrical repertoire, counted upon not only as a major heart-warmer and a holiday ritual but also as a guaranteed box-office draw by innumerable theater companies. A tale that warns against greed, it undoubtedly inspires a bit of greed as well.

This year appears to be the Scroogiest season yet for Southern California. Five Southland productions of Dickens’ work will operate on Actors’ Equity contracts during the coming holidays. The fare includes the longest local run yet for Patrick Stewart’s solo version and a three-city tour of a new production from A Noise Within, plus the annual renditions at South Coast Repertory, San Diego Repertory Theatre and Santa Susana Repertory Theatre.

In addition to all that, a comedy that lampoons the whole “Christmas Carol” industry--”Inspecting Carol”--is playing Culver City, after earlier productions in Laguna Beach and Solana Beach.

Here are close-up looks at some of the players in this year’s “Christmas Carol” field.

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Patrick Stewart was holed up in what he called a “shabby” Derbyshire hotel lounge one morning 11 years ago, on a day off from shooting “Lady Jane.” Torrents of rain fell outside. Having read the newspapers, he turned to a bookshelf, picked a volume of Dickens and began reading “A Christmas Carol.” He couldn’t put it down.

“I finished it in one sitting,” he recalled, “and as I did, my face was awash with tears.”

Shortly after that rainy day, Stewart first performed “Carol” at his brother’s request, at a benefit for the restoration of the organ at the parish church they had attended as children. He didn’t cut enough of the text, so it lasted almost three hours, he said, “but there were no signs of restlessness.”

Three years later, Stewart was in his second season on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and was, he says, “beginning to accept the reality that this series was not going to go away. I was concerned that my stage muscles would atrophy.” So he devised several solo performances he could do on short breaks from the series, without much planning.

One of them was “Carol.” He showed the script to a Dickens expert at UCLA, Albert Hutter, and performed this new adaptation for the first time in Hutter’s living room, followed by a couple of public but not publicized performances at UCLA--attended, he recalled with a measure of hyperbole, by “two old men and a dog.”

The following year, promoted performances began, again at UCLA. L.A. critics were invited and liked what they saw. Word went out through the Trekker network. “The rest is history,” Stewart said--six years of weekends at various Southland venues, three years of longer runs on Broadway, an Olivier Award in London in 1993, and now back to La Jolla and Los Angeles.

Because Stewart owns his adaptation, it has been “extraordinarily lucrative,” he said.

Yet he continues to be affected by the story on an emotional level, too. On a recent morning at an otherwise empty Doolittle Theatre, he began rehearsing the thing again, all by himself, with just a work light for illumination. Surely that first flush of emotion from 1985 was long gone? No, he said: “On at least two occasions, I could not go on, because I was too moved by the story.”

Stewart plays around 40 characters, though he said the exact number is in doubt because of disagreement among onlookers over “whether I play the pudding or not.” He tinkers with the text every year, and now approximately two-thirds of the original is cut, including several passages that, he says, “grieve me greatly.” Running time is down to approximately two hours plus intermission.

Dickens wouldn’t mind the cuts, Stewart believes. The author himself cut parts of the text at his own public readings, which usually were followed by his reading of the murder of Nancy from “Oliver Twist.” “Dickens was the first person who started softening up the story,” Stewart claims, because “he wanted something light to preface the murder.”

Despite such softening, Stewart said, some of the social criticism within “Carol” is as strong as anything else Dickens wrote. “So many versions emphasize the sentimental, the romantic, the bucolic, and not the redemption of an individual who was doomed. But I find the transformation of this remote, locked-away ice man incredibly moving.”

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“I feel like I’m going off to battle. I said to the dog, ‘I’ll see you in three weeks,’ ” said director Sabin Epstein. He was speaking on the eve of the first rehearsal for his adaptation of “A Christmas Carol,” to be staged by A Noise Within in Lancaster, Glendale and Redondo Beach on a $180,000 budget--the company’s largest budget ever for a single show.

There are 30 scenes in 90 minutes, Epstein said. The production includes slides and film images of moving clouds and water. Still, “they wouldn’t let me hire an airplane to go shoot over the ocean,” Epstein said with mock incredulity. “I don’t know why they’re so reluctant about that.”

Epstein’s emphasis appears to be on the ghosts, the dreams. “Charles Dickens meets Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud,” he said. He staged San Diego Repertory Theatre’s “Christmas Carol” in 1986 and 1987 using a similar approach.

His production also has lots of music. “Sixty of the 90 minutes are set to music,” he said. “A lot of it is underscored or sung. But it’s not a conventional musical. It’s closer to opera, with lots of recitative and choral singing.” Laura Karpman’s original music and vocal arrangements will use a piano and a prerecorded score.

It sounds sophisticated, but, Epstein says, “kids will get off on seeing one person play four or five roles. It’s a form of storytelling that doesn’t exist on a screen.” The cast includes 12 members of the company’s professional ensemble as well as two children.

Although his adaptation sounds very different from Stewart’s, Epstein pointed to a similar quality about “A Christmas Carol” that accounts for its power and popularity. “People have to believe that redemption is possible,” he said. “The meaner Scrooge is, the better the changes at the end. Here’s a calcified man who is now reborn as a child, to the point of being grotesque and hilarious as well as emancipated.”

“There is something that’s Christian about it,” said Epstein, who is Jewish. “But it’s humanistic as well. It transcends denomination.”

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Jerry Patch admits that the annual production of his adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” for South Coast Repertory began to be too much business-as-usual in the mid-’80s. It was apparent the players were feeling that way from a few of the practical jokes that cropped up.

At one performance, Hal Landon Jr.’s Scrooge opened a chest, used by some of the play’s ghosts, and found one of the actresses sprawling there in the nude, silently daring him to break out of character. Landon managed to keep a straight face.

During a couple of years, as the actors took their bows during the final Christmas Eve performance, the technical crew members in the booth--visible only from the stage--pulled down their pants and mooned the cast.

But such pranks have faded into history, he said. “Maybe because the principal players are older now, the story has a dimension it didn’t have then,” Patch said. This year, for the first time since 1985, all six of the actors designated as South Coast’s Founding Artists are in the cast.

Director John-David Keller “has me do something with the script every year to keep it fresh,” Patch said. The main change in this, the 17th annual “Carol,” was prompted by the return of the company’s casting director (and Founding Artist) Martha McFarland to the role of Mrs. Fezziwig. It consists of a two-page “montage effect getting into her scene rather than a realistic approach.”

“The nice thing is that the story is so powerful, there’s almost no way to screw it up.”

Patch noted that “the winter solstice is a time for bottoming out” in many cultures and the rebirth of Scrooge is a way to celebrate that. Yes, the season also brings with it a high suicide rate, he said, “because when that renewal doesn’t happen, the despair is palpable.”

“To the extent that we have a ritual in the theater, which is a ritual-based art anyway, this is the closest we get to it.”

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Dickens and Company: ‘A Christmas Carol’

Patrick Stewart: At Spreckels Theatre, 121 Broadway, San Diego, today, 3 p.m. $47.50. (619) 550-1010. At the Doolittle Theatre, 1615 N. Vine, Hollywood. Previews Dec. 3. Opens Dec. 5. Ends Dec. 22. Dark Dec. 10. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. $35-$49.50. (800) 233-3123.

A Noise Within: At Lancaster Performing Arts Center, 750 W. Lancaster Blvd., Lancaster. Dec. 5-7, 8 p.m. $22, $10 off for youths under 18. (805) 723-5950. At the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale, Dec. 10-15. Tuesday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m. $24-$28, $16-$20 for seniors over 65 and students with ID. (818) 546-1924 or (800) 233-3123. At Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach. Dec. 20-21, 8 p.m.; Dec. 21-22, 2 p.m. $10-$20. (310) 937-6606.

South Coast Repertory: 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Previews Dec. 1 and 3. Opens Dec. 4. Ends with Dec. 24 matinee. Tuesdays-Saturdays, Dec. 23, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 p.m.; Sundays and Dec. 24, noon and 4 p.m. $14-$34. $8 off for children under 12 (except Fridays and Saturdays). (714) 957-4033.

San Diego Repertory Theatre: Lyceum Theatre, Horton Plaza, San Diego. Previews Saturday, next Sun., and Dec. 1 and 3-5. Opens Dec. 6. Ends Dec. 29. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m. Sundays, 2 p.m. $21-$29, $7 off for children under 12. (619) 544-1000.

Santa Susana Repertory Theatre: Forum Theatre, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. Previews Dec. 6. Opens Dec. 7. Ends Dec. 22. Dec. 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18-21, 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 8, 15, 21, 22, 2:30 p.m. $22, $10 for children 12 and under. (805) 449-ARTS or (805) 497-8616.

Musical Theatre Guild: staged reading of a new musical version. at Veterans Brentwood Theatre, grounds of Veterans Administration, West L.A., Dec. 7, 8 p.m.; Dec. 8, 2 p.m. At Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Dec. 9, 8 p.m. $20; $10 for children 12 and under. (818) 848-6844.

Knightsbridge Theatre: 35 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Opens Friday. Ends Dec. 29. Fridays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m.; Dec. 21 and 28, 5 p.m. $15; $10 for seniors over 65 and students under 25. (818) 440-0821.

Other Programs

“Charles Dickens Reading ‘A Christmas Carol,’ ” Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St.,Long Beach. Saturday, Dec. 7 and 14, 2 p.m. $10, $5 for children under 12. (310) 494-1616.

“Inspecting Carol,” Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 14. $18, $14 for full-time students with ID. (310) 558-1555.