Ebenezer Scrooge

'Tis the season for giving, so a city housing authority worker in Boston raised nearly $100 for two boys who received what he considered a Scrooge-like reward of $1 for returning a lost wallet containing $2,000. "I wanted to put the screws to Ebenezer Scrooge," said John Bartolo, 35, who read about the incident in the Boston Herald. Bartolo enlisted some friends who went through bars, restaurants and a market to raise a more generous reward.

Have you ever wanted to strangle a ghost? You may well feel the urge after seeing "A Christmas Carol," Robert Zemeckis' exasperating re-imagining of the Dickens classic as a 3-D action-thriller zooming through Victorian London and the fever dreams of that most miserly of men, Ebenezer Scrooge. The "it's better to give than receive" moral to this story is almost lost under the snowdrifts of special effects. Then there is the blizzard of Jim Carrey's theatrics to weather. The actor voices eight characters, including Scrooge at all ages as well as the three ghosts who haunt him -- you can just see him in the recording studio pingponging manically around during one of the Scrooge-ghost tête-à-têtes.

There are so many adaptations of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" today, including ones with Muppets and Mickey Mouse, that a purist has no choice but to accept the changes by writers who think they can do the job better than the original author. But let your rewrites be consistent.

The Santa Susana Repertory Company may have to do without its usual Christmas this year, but its annual production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" will proceed with new strengths. Missing will be actor Eric Christmas, who has played Ebenezer Scrooge for the last four years and has retired from the production. Beginning Dec. 19, fans can see the busy 81-year-old actor co-starring in the feature film "Mouse Hunt." This year, Scrooge will be played by Hamilton Camp, 63.

Theatergoers who prefer "A Christmas Carol" straight up, with language and redemptive message intact, won't find much holiday cheer in "A Christmas Twist," SeaGlass Theatre's satiric treatment of the Dickens classic at the Victory Theatre Center in Burbank. Regrettably, even those who relish their Scrooge, Cratchits and ghostly Spirits played for laughs won't find this mash-up of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and "Oliver Twist" nearly as jolly as it could have been. Taking a sketchy and broad-stroke approach to both classics, writers Doug Armstrong, Keith Cooper and Maureen Morley have turned Oliver Twist into hapless workhouse orphan Tiny Twist, who is adopted by Bob Cratchit after trying to pick his pocket.

Ebenezer Scrooge took only one night to change his tune from "Bah! Humbug!" to "God bless us, every one!" Ambrose Bierce was made of sterner stuff. He reviled the holiday (and just about everything else) to the day he was last heard from, south of the border, on Dec. 26, 1913. Perhaps the greatest wit in American literature, and certainly its greatest cynic, Bierce defined Christmas in his satirical 1911 lexicon "The Devil's Dictionary" as "a day set apart and consecrated to gluttony, drunkenness, maudlin sentiment, gift-taking, public dullness and domestic misbehavior.

It's upon us again: Ebenezer Scrooge time. If presentations of Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol" seem endless, how must the season seem to actors who play Scrooge? What about an actor who has played the role consistently at South Coast Repertory for the past 16 years? Can there be any Christmas cheer left? Hal Landon Jr. asserts that there can be, and is. Besides, Landon says after a decade and a half, "I don't need nearly as much makeup now."

The role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the world's most adorable--and quotable--petty tyrant, provides a field day for any actor. Just ask South Coast Repertory Theatre's Hal Landon Jr., who knows every sneer, cackle, howl, wail--and profoundly nasty maxim--associated with this most Dickensian of curmudgeons.

Charles Dickens' most popular creation, Ebenezer Scrooge, usually takes on the tenor of the times, so it's not surprising that Robert Zemeckis' new performance-capture animation version of "A Christmas Carol" has its star, Jim Carrey, musing about where his Scrooge fits in today. "I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we're going through," says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. "Every construct we've built in American life is falling apart.