Finding a New Holiday Present

EBENEZER SCROOGE, watch your back.

Kevin McCollum, the same Broadway producer behind the musicals "Rent" and "Avenue Q," is out to grab a chunk of the holiday audiences that queue up yearly across the U.S. for productions of "A Christmas Carol" and "The Nutcracker."

McCollum and a team of partners are staging "Irving Berlin's White Christmas" in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston — three productions, each with 32 cast members and a 25-piece pit orchestra, all under director Walter Bobbie's supervision, with performances running through the end of the year.

"I think people are thirsty for something more over the holidays," McCollum said. "And I realized there's no musical. There's variety. The regional theaters do 'Christmas Carol,' and the ballets do 'Nutcracker.' But musical theater has nothing."

Source: Christopher Reynolds, http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/cl-ca-white27nov27,0,2479756.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels