Best breeding of a cultural cash cow

Boston Ballet has its Nutcracker; the Lyric Stage will present some mix of Nunsense and Fiddler on the Roof called Meshugah-Nuns. But the cash cow that gets milked most often on area stages at holiday time is A Christmas Carol -- the surefire crowd-pleasing choice of just about every troupe but the Jewish Theatre of New England. If you tried to fly through all these ghost-guided Christmas Eves with Scrooge you'd get jet lag! But here are a few choices.

Trinity Repertory Company in Providence may be the biggest Christmas dairy farm, fielding two separate companies, with two separate conversion-ripe tightwads, in the 27th annual outing of the Adrian Hall/Richard Cumming adaptation of the Dickens tale, November 20 through December 27. Extra bonus: its Scrooge flies. Meanwhile, a new Trinity Rep Christmas Carol, this one an adaptation by artistic director Oskar Eustis and associate artistic director Amanda Dehnert, debuts out of town, as it were, at Boston's Cutler Majestic Theatre, December 9 through 21. North Shore Music Theatre fields a Christmas Carol rife with special effects and Victorian music, in its 15th annual outing December 5 through 21. Tiny Tim, the Fezziwigs, and the Yuletide ghosties also appear at Stoneham Theatre, November 28 through December 21; at Worcester's Foothills Theatre Company, November 27 through December 28; and at Hartford Stage, November 13 through December 28. God bless them, every one.

Trinity Repertory Company, 201 Washington Street, Providence, RI, (401) 351-4242; www.trinityrep.com. Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont Street, Boston, (617) 824-8000; www.maj.org. North Shore Music Theatre, 62 Dunham Road, (978) 232-7200; www.nsmt.org. Stoneham Theatre, 395 Main Street, Stoneham, (781) 279-2200; www.stonehamtheatre.org. Foothills Theatre Company, 100 Front Street, Worcester, (508) 754-4018; www.foothillstheatre.com. Hartford Stage, 50 Church Street, Hartford, CT, (860) 527-5151; www.hartfordstage.org.