I’m
David L. Coddon,
and here’s your guide to all things essential in San Diego’s arts and culture this week.
If you can spare 50 minutes this Christmas Eve, treat yourself to a warm and cozy musical visit with Jeff Berkley and Calman Hart. The area duo’s ”
A Berkley Hart Christmas Special”just makes you feel good. It’s a streaming incarnation of the kind of annual holiday shows Berkley Hart has been performing in the county for over a decade, and if you’re too busy to watch and listen today, it’ll be available through New Year’s Day (tickets $15).
Finding More Than Humbug in Scrooge and Company
This year a critic (and fan) of “A Christmas Carol” finds it especially resonant as a “timely study of what it truly means to be a decent person in a community.”
Video
Published Dec. 13, 2020Updated Dec. 16, 2020
When I was younger, I drank in every version of “A Christmas Carol” I could find like they were tumblers of eggnog. Eventually, I became a connoisseur. (I maintain the supremacy of “The Muppet Christmas Carol” and “Scrooged,” which I am obligated to watch whenever they’re on TV.)
It isn’t the holly-jolliness that draws me in; I’ve always been intrigued by Scrooge’s scrooginess and the various interpretations of the three ghosts. But this year, as I indulged in a holiday buffet of different productions of “A Christmas Carol,” I found not just a story of redemption and the Christmas spirit but a study of what it truly means to be a decent person in a community. Dickens’s tale, like many of