Christmas Carol

Single Carrot Theatre is offering a raw bit of Christmas activism in La Muneca, a harshly plotted, rigorously performed fable staged at Load of Fun Gallery. "A Christmas Carol," it ain't. The play, based on a poem by late-19th-century Spanish writer Vital Aza, is an unforgiving tale of a cheerful but ignored orphan girl's day on a city street in winter. The title translates as The Doll, which is what the girl, Lucia, eyes through the window of a toy store as the proprietor repeatedly chases her away.

Let's hear a third-generation atheist of Jewish ancestry speak of Christmas. Blake Gopnik says: "The wonderfully secular, partly pagan solstice celebration that is Dec. 25 also had a tie to Christ for about 2,000 years. The link is too well forged to try to break it now without diminishing the whole event. I find beauty in the most clearly Christian parts of Christmas, and I'm not willing to lose out on it, or let the Christians keep it for themselves. I'll buy `In God We Trust' as crucial decoration on the dollar bill, and I'll use `Merry Christmas' as the right words to usher in the solstice season, so in the full spirit of the holiday, I'd like to wish us one and all, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Zoroastrians (even my fellow atheists)

"A Midnight Carol: A Novel of How Charles Dickens Saved Christmas," by Patricia K. Davis. St. Martin's Press. 198 pages. $16.95.'Tis the season for selling.The book trade gets its jollies -- and no small amount of profit -- every year around this time with little books timed for the holidays. Many are no more satisfying than Christmas candy -- a desire is sated but no sustenance gained.Now along comes "A Midnight Carol" by Patricia Davis, a slim novel about Charles Dickens and the circumstances surrounding his writing of "A Christmas Carol."

Every Christmas needs one good read-aloud story to pull at the heart strings. Yes, you could watch "It's a Wonderful Life" (we do), but we're talking about having a house full of family and friends that serves as the perfect captive audience for reading aloud.Try these:"The Polar Express," by Chris Van Allsburg"A Christmas Memory," by Truman Capote"Star Mother's Youngest Child," by Louise Moeri"A Child's Christmas in Wales," by Dylan Thomas"A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens"The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey," by Susan Wojciechowski"Santa Calls," by William Joyce-- Valerie & Walter's Best Books for Children by Valerie V. Lewis and Walter M. Mayes

For a young actress planning a life in theater, it was a golden opportunity: an ensemble role in a new production of "Babes in Arms" at Lincoln Center, Manhattan's famed performing arts center.Just 17, Stephanie Waters was already a seasoned professional. Since the age of 12, she'd wowed Baltimore-Washington area critics in shows such as "Gigi" and "The Wizard of Oz," in which she became one of the youngest people ever to be nominated for a prestigious Helen Hayes Award, the regional equivalent of a Tony.

In the original version of "A Christmas Carol," Tiny Tim didn't exclaim, "God bless us every one" -- Little Fred said it. But the name of the most memorable character in this beloved Christmas story was changed from Little Fred to Tiny Tim by author Charles Dickens just before "A Christmas Carol" was published in 1843.That's just one of the little-known but intriguing facts about the holiday novella. While we continue to enjoy numerous movie and TV productions of "A Christmas Carol," equally fascinating is the story behind the story and why Dickens was moved to write the classic.

What the dickens? 'Tis the season for "A Christmas Carol," and Fell's Point Corner Theatre's production will once again give students from its Children's Theatre Program a chance to perform with local adult actors. Chuck Duncan directs the theater's annual holiday event, which features John Sadowsky as Scrooge, Kenneth Johnson as Marley, Ali Silbert as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Lauren Ciarapella as Christmas Past and Shalamaar Brown as Tiny Tim.As is the theater's tradition, the production, which opens tomorrow, will be accompanied by a Christmas bazaar offering various arts and crafts, toys, jewelry and baked goods.

You might say that Joe Sears and Jaston Williams have become prisoners of Tuna, Texas. Sixteen years ago, the Texas-based actors created a two-man show called "Greater Tuna," in which they played nearly all the residents of the fictitious third-smallest town in Texas.By now, the show, which started out as a party skit, has practically become an industry. Sears and Williams tour 10 months out of every year, while numerous other casts -- sometimes comprising a half-dozen or more actors -- continue to play the denizens of Tuna in separate productions around the country.

Axis Theatre. "Twilight of the Golds." 7: 30 p.m. Nov. 2 at historic Meadow Mill, 3600 Clipper Mill Road. Needed are three men, ages 20-50, and a woman in her 50s. Perform a short contemporary monologue. Call 410-243-0167.Handel Choir of Baltimore. Limited openings for experienced singers in the soprano and tenor sections for concerts of Handel's "Messiah" and the J. S. Bach B minor Mass. Full choir of 75 rehearses from 7: 45 p.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays; smaller chamber choir rehearses Sunday evenings.

All state universities should be combined under single 0) umbrellaThe formation of the University System of Maryland by combining 11 institutions of higher learning was a step in the right direction. However, two public institutions were allowed to remain outside this group. This arrangement resulted in two governing bodies with overlapping responsibilities and caused confusion and unnecessary paperwork.It is no wonder that the presidents of the colleges were not happy working under those conditions.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and the Towson University fall film series marks the occasion with Jim Sheridan's "My Left Foot." It tells the tumultuous story of Irish author Christy Brown, who managed to write best-selling books despite cerebral palsy that left him with control only of his left foot (he used his little toe to type). Based on Brown's autobiography of the same name (he died in 1981), it's a robust, stirring, bracingly unsentimental account of a person overcoming disability.

Bowie Community Theatre caps its three-play season of comedies with Daniel Sullivan's Inspecting Carol, a backstage farce about a struggling dysfunctional regional theater company's problems with its annual cash-cow production of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The fictional New Brunswick Soapbox Players count on A Christmas Carol to help finish their season in the black. Beset by compounding problems at this approaching holiday season, artistic director Zorah Bloch deals with directing domineering actor Larry Vauxhall, who plays Scrooge, planning to turn Dickens' classic into a political statement.

The Man Who Invented Christmas By Les Standiford Crown Publishing Group / 256 pages / $19.95 One of the many famous anecdotes arising from the life of Charles Dickens, the most important English novelist in the 19th century, came when poet Theodore Watts-Duncan reported that a young cockney street vendor, having just heard of the author's passing, exclaimed, "Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die, too?" Christmas has so long been entrenched as the top holiday in the Western calendar that it seems preposterous to date, as Les Standiford does in The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, our now-common yuletide traditions to the publication of a single book.

With the headlines dominated by news that the governor of Illinois was apparently looking to sell off the state's U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, maybe it's time for all of us to sit down and watch Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (12:15 p.m., TCM) for a reminder of what American politics could (dare one suggest, should?) be all about. James Stewart, in a role that should have won him an Oscar as the Best Actor of 1939, is Jefferson Smith, a rube from the backwoods, picked by political bosses to fill the seat of a deceased U.S. senator.

An Annapolis tradition, Colonial Players' version of A Christmas Carol will help to kick off a season of holiday fare. The Colonial Players' take on the Dickens classic was created in 1981 by locals Rick Wade and Dick Gessner. Shows are this weekend and next with limited seating available at Colonial's 108 East St. theater only for Friday performances or on standby. Information 410-268-7373. Opening Saturday and Sunday and continuing the following weekend in AACC's Humanities Recital Hall is another local holiday tradition, Pasadena Theatre Company's adaptation of It's a Wonderful Life.

How do you pack up a Broadway musical and take it on the road? You get a really, really big suitcase. The first national tour of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! officially opens tonight at the Hippodrome Theatre (after two preview performances), when a cast of two-dozen performers shuffles across the stage in red, pointy-toed Who shoes. Putting together the $4 million national tour in Charm City requires nine semi-trailer trucks, a stage-floor-to-ceiling tree with star hung askew, a realistic rendition of Mount Crumpet with a sleigh full of presents teetering at the top, and catwalks full of confetti "snow."

Let's hear a third-generation atheist of Jewish ancestry speak of Christmas. Blake Gopnik says: "The wonderfully secular, partly pagan solstice celebration that is Dec. 25 also had a tie to Christ for about 2,000 years. The link is too well forged to try to break it now without diminishing the whole event. I find beauty in the most clearly Christian parts of Christmas, and I'm not willing to lose out on it, or let the Christians keep it for themselves. I'll buy `In God We Trust' as crucial decoration on the dollar bill, and I'll use `Merry Christmas' as the right words to usher in the solstice season, so in the full spirit of the holiday, I'd like to wish us one and all, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Zoroastrians (even my fellow atheists)

Single Carrot Theatre is offering a raw bit of Christmas activism in La Muneca, a harshly plotted, rigorously performed fable staged at Load of Fun Gallery. "A Christmas Carol," it ain't. The play, based on a poem by late-19th-century Spanish writer Vital Aza, is an unforgiving tale of a cheerful but ignored orphan girl's day on a city street in winter. The title translates as The Doll, which is what the girl, Lucia, eyes through the window of a toy store as the proprietor repeatedly chases her away.

The Senator Theatre's annual holiday twin bill, with proceeds going to the Maryland Food Bank, is set for Sunday. It's a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart getting a healthy dose of holiday self-worth, courtesy of the good folks of Bedford Falls, will show at 11 a.m., 3:45 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., while Alastair Sim's take on that classic humbug Scrooge, A Christmas Carol, will show at 1:45 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Admission is $6, or $6 worth of nonperishable food....

This holiday season, regardless of whether you want a classic celebration or a quirky one, the Baltimore theater and arts scene has got you covered. On the traditional side, you've got A Christmas Carol and Fiddler on the Roof. And on the not-so-traditional side, the offerings include a burlesque show, murder mysteries, improv comedy, a trio of rednecks and more. Check out this sampling of holiday-themed arts events: Theater Through Dec. 15 -- Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre presents Slay Ride, a late-night, holiday-themed murder mystery.