Alternative Wonderlands : Orson Bean Plays Scrooge Like Popeye

In a holiday season in which theatrical offerings include such big-budget productions as South Coast Rep’s perennial “A Christmas Carol,” the Old Globe’s new “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” as well as the upcoming Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Universal Amphitheatre, many smaller theaters are presenting alternative interpretations of the Christmas spirit.

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Orson Bean commences his portrayal of Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” with a double-take and a drum beat. We immediately get the picture. Bean’s adaptation at Pacific Resident Theatre is cheerfully tongue-in-cheek, his Scrooge a comical curmudgeon whose muttered asides are more reminiscent of Popeye than Dickens.

Despite Yolanda Perez’s cumbersome direction, the tack works well. Growling, grimacing and teetering around the stage like the Energizer codger, Bean obviously revels in his role, and the audience has great good fun right along with him.

Some of the actors aren’t up to the Dickensian language, but Robert Evan Collins makes a wonderfully stentorian Ghost of Christmas Present, and Stephen Hoye and Suzanne Ford manage surprising emotional resonance as Bob and Mrs. Cratchit. John Binkley’s sets and Kathi O’Donohue’s lighting complete the holiday portrait, and costumer Audrey Eisner rigs a hilarious loincloth of fairy lights on Christmas Past (William Lithgow). It’s welcome whimsy in a show that could stand a tad more.

“Carol” runs concurrently with the lovely “A Christmas Memory.”

* “A Christmas Carol,” Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. Thursdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Ends Jan. 3. $10-$20. (323) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.