In setting out to do a new spin on the Dickens classic, American Conservatory Theater Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon enlisted playwright and friend Craig Lucas to write a new metaplay about a small-town putting on a production of 'A Christmas Carol.'

Perhaps the most anticipated production of the holiday season in the Bay Area is ACT's A Whynot Christmas Carol. Details have mostly remained scarce until now about this new play, in which Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol becomes a play within the play, but as the show begins previews we now know a few things about it. (SFist's review will run after opening night, which is December 8.)

MacKinnon, who joined ACT in 2018, took on the task of revamping or replacing what had been a holiday-season mainstay of the company since 1976 by calling on her friend and collaborator Craig Lucas, the Tony-nominated playwright of A Prelude to a Kiss, and the writer of the book of the Amelie musical, which MacKinnon directed.

"Craig was the first writer who came to mind," MacKinnon says, speaking to Bay City News, saying "his sensibility, rigor and curiosity are a perfect fit to wrestle with the Dickens [text] and bring it to life."

MacKinnon adds that, "Part of the idea of our Whynot theater company digging into a new adaptation of ‘Carol’ is to make space for points of view beyond Ebenezer and his comeuppance."

And Lucas didn't want to do anything like a straightforward adaptation, clichés and all. He tells the Chronicle this week, of A Christmas Carol, "It’s just something that people put on, like a fuzzy blanket, to feel warm and cozy at Christmas. They’re all doing those English accents, and it’s all set in the 19th century. It’s snowing, and the people are either wicked or good."

Instead, he's imagined a fictional town called Whynot, where a community theater group is staging a director's new version A Christmas Carol, and the play follows their foible-filled journey from the first rehearsal through opening night. A reportedly amazing set will take shape piece by piece through this process, "like a time-lapse photo of a plant growing," says Tony-winning set designer David Zinn (Funny Girl, The Spongebob Musical, The Wizard of Oz), speaking to the Chronicle.

Lucas speaks to honoring a classic piece of culture, and the reasons we continue to do old plays, in his interview with the Chronicle, saying, "It’s easy to lose sight of, that we have a continuity with other humans. When we go to see ‘Hamlet’ or ‘A Christmas Carol,’ the dead are being respected as much as the yet to be born. It’s an enactment of something that says we’re more than just this moment."

Playing Scrooge, or playing the actor named Phil who's playing Scrooge, is local actor Dan Hiatt, who was a veteran of the former Christmas Carol production, playing Marley's Ghost year after year. And the cast includes newcomers as well as some other familiar faces in Bay Area theater, including Stacy Ross and Catherine Castellanos.

There's dancing in the show, choreographed by Erika Chong Shuch, and original music by The Kilbanes (The Code), as well as plenty of stage magic — the latter provided by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child illusionist Skylar Fox. And puppetry designer Amanda Villalobos has fashioned puppets that are woven into the show as well, including the one above, the Ghost of Christmas Future.

We only have these hints of the surprises in store, but hopefully in the hands of a talent like Craig Lucas, this spin on the classic will have plenty to say about the times we live in.

He tells Bay City News, "As in our Gilded Age that directly preceded the Great Depression, we are indeed living through a time when large groups of powerful people are fomenting fear and doubt and deprivation and threats of punitive action and violence, as Scrooge does… Scrooge’s dark night of the soul certainly represents a hope many of us have for our collective salvation."

'A Whynot Christmas Carol' is in previews now, and plays through Christmas Eve, December 24. Find tickets here.