Exit Stage Right : To Properly Conclude Shakespeare O.C.’s 7-Year Run of Christmas Shows, Founder Bradac Himself Will Act

Call it the seven-year Grinch: Shakespeare Orange County will present its seventh and final “A Shakespearean Christmas” this week.

“It has its own natural artistic life,” said Thomas F. Bradac, the troupe’s artistic director. “And that life has come and gone.”

Subtitled “A Midwinter Night’s Dream,” the popular production unites a cast of nine for seasonal readings, songs and skits, which will be performed Thursday through Sunday at Chapman University’s Waltmar Theatre.

Shakespeare made scant reference to Christmas--which became a bone fide holiday a couple centuries after his death--but Shakespeare Orange County touches on yuletide themes such as love, passion and rebirth that abound in the Bard’s sonnets and plays.

Readings include excerpts from “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Twelfth Night” and “Hamlet,” plus recitations of such merry chestnuts as Clement C. Moore’s poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” Charles Dickens, Robert Frost, Ogden Nash and Samuel T. Coleridge also are given voice.

For comic relief, the company offers an “act-along” to “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

A less traditional vignette takes inspiration from Harriet Ann Jacob’s “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself.” Actress Tamiko Washington reenacts a poignant scene in which Jacob’s escaped African-American slave watches her children celebrate Christmas from her attic hideaway.

“We started with Shakespeare but added other authors with different views of the holidays and the season,” Bradac said in a recent interview.

The casual, no-frills production has cast members clad mostly in evening clothes; set decor consists of three festively decorated live Christmas trees and several large Chinese lanterns.

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Like ballet troupes who bank on seasonal cheer to cash in on “The Nutcracker,” Shakespeare Orange County has over the years raised between $40,000 and $50,000 with the show, conceived as a benefit and as a way to keep in touch with audiences. The troupe stages a summer season on about $100,000 annually and is otherwise dark during winter.

Still, when Repetitive Sugar Plum Syndrome set in this year, Bradac decided to call it curtains. To get some of the performers to return, Bradac had to promise that this would be the last time.

“It’s been kind of wonderful, and we had a great time doing it, but there comes a point where you say enough’s enough,” he said.

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For further incentive, Bradac agreed to trod the boards for the first time since the show premiered in 1992, the year he founded SOC. He’ll don a red suit to animate Moore’s poem as St. Nick and perhaps read a sonnet. Returning cast members, in addition to Washington, include Eve Himmelheber, Carl Reggiardo, Peter Westenhofer, John Fredrick Jones and Michael Nehring, who directs, as usual.

“Michael was at [a play in Los Angeles] the other night, and some people tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘This can’t be the final Christmas show! It’s our entire holiday season,’ ” Bradac said.

“We’ve gotten that kind of response, so I think we’re going to do a curtain speech explaining that we’re not going out of business; no one’s shutting us down; it’s just time to move on.”

Bradac is planning a replacement of sorts. He envisions a one-night fund-raiser, maybe a black-tie affair, serving Shakespeare and champagne.

There won’t be any of that poured this week, but patrons may want to ease the sweet sorrow of parting with hot cider and cookies, “A Shakespearean Christmas” tradition from the start.

* Shakespeare Orange County presents “A Shakespearean Christmas” at Chapman University’s Waltmar Theatre, 301 E. Palm Ave., Orange. Performance at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. $16-$20. (714) 744-7016.