Spirited holiday fun

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Nov 30, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Three years, three husbands.

And here’s the amazing part – all three have the name Bob Cratchit.

No. It isn’t one of those role reversal situations where the husband takes the wife’s name. Let’s just say when it comes to names, Mrs. Cratchit is very picky about her choice of husbands.

The story wouldn’t work otherwise.

And Mrs. Cratchit would never dream of changing the story. As for its presentation, maybe. Well, definitely, because so many people know the story. And those who don’t will learn it soon enough, then pass it on to the next generation.

Like, for instance, the youngest cast members in Playmakers of Baton Rouge’s production of A Christmas Carol.

“Well, if you mention The Muppets Christmas Carol to them, and they begin to understand,” Paige Gagliano said.

Gagliano is co-directing A Christmas Carol with Playmakers’ Executive Director Melanie Couvillon. The play is a co-production with the Manship Theatre, where it opens Dec. 5 and continues to Dec. 14. This is the third year Manship and Playmakers have teamed up on this production, this Charles Dickens Christmas classic. Which could be a potential problem.

Really, it could, simply because the story is so well-known. And after two years of performances, audiences potentially could get bored.

Maybe, but that’s not the case here. The story may be the same, but the show is always different.

Which is why Mrs. Cratchit always finds herself with a different Bob each year.

“Yeah,” Nancy Litton said, laughing. “I’m on my third husband — and my third set of children. Some of the Cratchit children are the same from year to year, but the entire group is never the same.”

Litton is one of the few actors who has kept her role in this production. She knows her role well, but she also knows she’ll have to make accommodations from one year to the next, because, well, new Cratchit kids will interact differently on stage.