Ebenezer Scrooge

“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” — Ebenezer Scrooge “A Christmas Carol” With the weather dropping below freezing this December, thoughts have turned to all things holiday. Here are some Charles Dickens-inspired choices for a splendid season: Irish Dickens Dinner, Muldoon’s Irish Pub and Country Kitchen Muldoon’s in Newport Beach has become well-known for its annual Irish Dickens Dinner, which takes the Victorian theme to the hilt, from bodices to bangers and mash.

In Charles Dickens' words, Ebenezer Scrooge is a "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner," but the longtime star of South Coast Repertory's "A Christmas Carol" is anything but that in real life. This year's "Tiny" Tim Cratchit, Omead Moini, often compares working with Landon to spending time with family. "When he is on stage as Scrooge, you think 'That's Scrooge,' " the 7-year-old said. "But in real life, he is really, really nice." So nice, in fact, that when Landon's two daughters were young children, he did not permit them to come to the show.

The two boys playing Tiny Tim in South Coast Repertory’s annual holiday production of “A Christmas Carol” know the meaning of family tradition. Parker Cohn’s sister played the part of Belinda last year, and Phillip Swanson’s three older brothers were cast as Tiny Tim in prior years’ productions. Parker, 8, and Phillip, 9, said director John-David Keller (or “JD,” as Parker refers to him) explained the importance of the show to them.

Tom Titus When you've been putting on the same holiday show for 23 years, to the point where you could do it in your sleep, it's easy to fall into phone-it-in mode, to go through the motions and press all the right buttons. Happily, South Coast Repertory has not fallen into that trap. Its latest rendition of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" -- adapted in 1980 by company member Jerry Patch and produced every December since then -- is a fresh and vital staging, even for someone who has seen all 22 previous editions.

Tom Titus To those certainties of death and taxes must now be added a third -- the emergence of an ever-superior staging of Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol" each December at South Coast Repertory. In some respects, it's the same production that first was unveiled a quarter of a century ago, in 1980, but in others -- primarily technical acumen and ensemble excellence -- it's a new show that gets newer every year, even as its director and central character remain unchanged.

KAREN WIGHT I have created a family of Christmas-light fanatics, and I happily perpetuate the tradition year after year. I like nothing more than arming myself with a Starbucks peppermint hot chocolate, popping the Vince Guaraldi Trio playing "A Charlie Brown Christmas" into the CD player of the car and cruising around town looking at the fabulous light displays. Each year, there are new twists and new venues to explore. The Castaways has won the Wight House annual award in the past with each house fabulously lighted up and proudly showing off all those intricate roof lines.

Alex Coolman The ghosts of Christmas plays past are coming back to haunt South Coast Repertory. The playhouse is putting on its 20th annual production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," and this year, there's a twist that Ebenezer Scrooge could easily appreciate. Actors from productions of years gone by will congregateat the theater Wednesday night for a reunion, bringing with them a bit of playhouse history and a lesson about the difficulty of making art pay in the Scrooge-ish environment of the real world.

When you've seen all 26 productions of South Coast Repertory's annual holiday treat, "A Christmas Carol" (including several visits to the 1984 incarnation in which your 11-year-old son participated), you tend to look for the subtlest of differences from one year to another. This time around, director John-David Keller has ratcheted up the intensity of Jerry Patch's adaptation of Charles Dickens classic -- not just for the central character of Ebenezer Scrooge (once again delivered superbly by Hal Landon Jr.)

“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” — Ebenezer Scrooge “A Christmas Carol” With the weather dropping below freezing this December, thoughts have turned to all things holiday. Here are some Charles Dickens-inspired choices for a splendid season: Irish Dickens Dinner, Muldoon’s Irish Pub and Country Kitchen Muldoon’s in Newport Beach has become well-known for its annual Irish Dickens Dinner, which takes the Victorian theme to the hilt, from bodices to bangers and mash.

Among cinephiles, there may be much discussion about who best portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge on the screen. Purists may prefer Alistair Sim, while others might opt for George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart or even Henry Winkler. For local theatergoers, however, there is no controversy. The mantle for both excellence and longevity belongs on the head of South Coast Repertory’s Hal Landon Jr. — where it now has rested for 30 years. Landon’s Scrooge in SCR’s annual rendition of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” — adapted by former company member Jerry Patch in 1980 for what initially was intended as a one-shot production — has reached legendary status.

With the opening of “A Christmas Carol” at South Coast Repertory for the 29th time and “It’s a Wonderful Life” in its second go-round at Vanguard University, the holiday season definitely has arrived. At South Coast Repertory, actors come and actors go in the annual “Carol.” Long-timers John Ellington, Don Took, Ron Boussom, Howard Shangraw and Martha McFarland aren’t with the show any more, but two elements remain unchanged — director John-David Keller doing another Hitchcockian turn and actor Hal Landon Jr. once again bringing Ebenezer Scrooge back to life.

Maybe there’s a little bit of Ebenezer Scrooge in all of us. We forget to be thankful, we don’t treat people as well as we could, and very often, we’re angry and may not even know why. “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens’ classic tale of one man’s redemption of character, was written almost 200 years ago, yet countless numbers of people read the book or see some version of the story every December....

The two boys playing Tiny Tim in South Coast Repertory’s annual holiday production of “A Christmas Carol” know the meaning of family tradition. Parker Cohn’s sister played the part of Belinda last year, and Phillip Swanson’s three older brothers were cast as Tiny Tim in prior years’ productions. Parker, 8, and Phillip, 9, said director John-David Keller (or “JD,” as Parker refers to him) explained the importance of the show to them.

In Charles Dickens' words, Ebenezer Scrooge is a "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner," but the longtime star of South Coast Repertory's "A Christmas Carol" is anything but that in real life. This year's "Tiny" Tim Cratchit, Omead Moini, often compares working with Landon to spending time with family. "When he is on stage as Scrooge, you think 'That's Scrooge,' " the 7-year-old said. "But in real life, he is really, really nice." So nice, in fact, that when Landon's two daughters were young children, he did not permit them to come to the show.

The holiday season is upon us, which at South Coast Repertory means that it's time once again to thrust the spotlight on a crusty old miser who's having a Dickens of a time getting a good night's sleep. Yes, "A Christmas Carol" is back, Jerry Patch's stage adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens story with the usual complement of familiar faces. This rendition — the 27th annual — offers the same Scrooge, the same director and several of the same actors who have traversed the stage in this holiday treat since the early 1980s.

When you've seen all 26 productions of South Coast Repertory's annual holiday treat, "A Christmas Carol" (including several visits to the 1984 incarnation in which your 11-year-old son participated), you tend to look for the subtlest of differences from one year to another. This time around, director John-David Keller has ratcheted up the intensity of Jerry Patch's adaptation of Charles Dickens classic -- not just for the central character of Ebenezer Scrooge (once again delivered superbly by Hal Landon Jr.)