SCROOGED

Thought I’d take the wife and kiddies down to the Doolittle to see Patrick Stewart’s “extraordinarily lucrative” production of “A Christmas Carol” (“A Dickens of a Time,” by Don Shirley. Nov. 24).

Unfortunately, I’ve been having trouble making ends meet and at 50 bucks a seat (all right, $35 for the cheapies, but all the kids wanted to see if he was really “that bald”), I couldn’t come up with the odd $311 (including parking and dinner at Subway) required to provide my little clan with a holiday theater treat.

So Stewart owns the rights to his adaptation? Wow! No wonder his face was “awash with tears” when he read it. I cry like that when I pull a $5 match on my Lotto scratcher. I’ll bet the .2% of the population who can afford a ticket to his show are going to enjoy themselves.

Stewart might try reading that story again. Although I gotta hand it to him, he sure seems to understand the meaning of Christmas (in L.A.).

BILL LAWRENCE

Santa Monica

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My father, Percy Herbert, was a well-known character actor in England and Hollywood for over 50 years, and I myself was in rep in England years ago. I wrote the music to an adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” in which Simon Callow played Mr. Fezziwig. I remember children barely able to afford the 1 pound 50 to come and see us, and I remember the joy on their faces when their parents were able to scrape up the money to get them in.

How many children, unless they come from Brentwood, Encino or Beverly Hills, are going to have their parents pay $50 a seat for them at this time of year?

KATRINA HERBERT WOOD

Beverly Hills