Local actors get a chance to shine in `Christmas Carol'

But Keach's Scrooge is well supported by a top-notch troupe that includes several Trinity Rep veterans and a number of young, up-and-coming Boston musical theater talents.

The presence of Miguel Cervantes ("Bat Boy"), Kent French ("Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris"), and Emmee McInnis (of Jose Mateo's Ballet Theatre) add a cozy, home-for-the holidays glow to the classic show.

Local actors get few opportunities to work in the Theater District, says Cervantes. Most "downtown" shows are touring productions, cast long before they get to Boston, he explains.

Trinity Rep could easily have cast "A Christmas Carol" from its own stable of actors. But the company has already done that this year in Providence, where Trinity has staged "A Christmas Carol" each season for 28 years.

"The result is a largely Boston cast that's having a blast," says Cervantes, who performed on the Majestic stage five years ago when he was an undergraduate at Emerson College. He didn't expect to be back in a professional production at the "shiny, spiffy," newly renovated theater so soon.

"It's great to be doing something completely different," says Cervantes. "It's big budget, and it's huge and pulls out all the stops and bells and whistles -- and it's so much fun."

The 25-year-old actor's star rose last season when he played the title role in the SpeakEasy Stage Company's runaway hit "Bat Boy" at the Boston Center for the Arts. It shone again this fall in the SpeakEasy/Sugan Theatre Company production of "A Man of No Importance," in which Cervantes played a hunky Dublin bus driver.

Even in the chorus of "A Christmas Carol," Cervantes stands out. He sings with a verve and moves with an ease that is rare among veteran actors and astonishing for a performer his age.

Neither tall nor conventionally attractive, Cervantes possesses the utterly appealing stage presence of a born showman who loves what he's doing and wants his audience to share his good time.

"Whatever it is, Miguel has got it," says Mary Callanan, who appeared with Cervantes in "Bat Boy" and is understudying the women's roles in "A Christmas Carol."

"It's been a great year," says Cervantes, noting that in one year he's evolved onstage from a fanged freak of nature to a Victorian gentleman, one of the characters he plays in "A Christmas Carol."

"I play a happy street person and a factory worker and Topper, a shy guy who finally gets to dance at a party, and I get to wear all kinds of hats," says Cervantes.

Of all the headgear, he adds, "the top hat is the best."

Reading material Tony Award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson will take the role of Troy opposite Boston's Jacqui Parker as Rose in a Jan. 12 reading of August Wilson's "Fences" at the Shubert Theatre.

The reading is the second in the Wang Center for the Performing Arts' "American Voices" series, which kicked off last week with Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

The Albee reading drew a crowd of more than 160, and the size and enthusiasm of the audience wowed Karen MacDonald, the American Repertory Theatre veteran who read the role of Martha opposite Denis O'Hare as George. "I couldn't believe how good the response was," says MacDonald, who had another brush with the role four days later when she and a crowd of ART artists took in Ryan Landry's Albee-influenced "Who's Afraid of the Virgin Mary?" at Machine.

According to MacDonald, "George and Martha in a manger are a gas."

`Fox' on the prowl A revival of Larry Gelbart's "Sly Fox," starring Richard Dreyfuss and Eric Stoltz, is coming to the Shubert Theatre in February for a two-week, pre-Broadway engagement.

A reimagination of Ben Jonson's "Volpone," set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, "Sly Fox" will be directed by Arthur Penn, who helmed the 1976 Broadway premiere of the comedy starring George C. Scott.

The revival opens Feb. 20 and runs through March 7 at the Shubert, its only engagement before a Broadway opening scheduled for April 1. Tickets go on sale Jan. 18 at the Shubert box office (265 Tremont St.) and through Telecharge (800-447-7400; www.telecharge.com). Tickets are available now to Show of the Month Club members.

Change of venue The 20th-anniversary tour of "Nunsense," which had scheduled its five-day February run at the Shubert, will instead run Feb. 10-15 at the Wilbur Theatre. The anniversary tour features Kaye Ballard, Georgia Engel, Mimi Hines, Darlene Love, and Lee Meriwether as the Little Sisters of Hoboken.

Tickets previously purchased for the Shubert performances must be returned to the Shubert box office and will be reissued for the Wilbur engagement. Tickets are now on sale at the Wilbur and Colonial Theatre box offices; online at www.ticketmaster.com; or by calling Ticketmaster, 617-931-2787.

Maureen Dezell can be reached at dezell@globe.com.