"St. Nicholas," a monologue in which Martin Giles is directed by PICT artistic director Andrew Paul, is only indirectly a Christmas story, the connection probably being that the original St. Nicholas was a 4th-century bishop reputed to perform miracles.

But "Dublin Carol" takes place on Christmas Eve, when the loneliness of the disconnected can be intense. The setting is a dingy funeral home office with a couple of shabby decorations. There the alcoholic John Plunket, a failed husband and father, has three scenes, two with a young assistant and one with the daughter he hasn't seen in years.

It's emotionally charged stuff. Jackie Maxwell chose to accept Paul's invitation to make her American debut "because I love the play." She had developed an affinity for McPherson by directing his "The Weir" in Toronto several years ago.

Running the Shaw leaves her just a month or two for other directing jobs. So when Paul called her eight months ago, this November-December slot seemed "kind of perfect. It's a compact play, not gynormous. And it's a world I feel comfortable in, Dublin and these people. Rereading it with the big central scene between John and his daughter, I said yes."

Then she asked Paul, jokingly, "So this is your Christmas show?" It turns out it is.

Working here, a five-hour drive from her own theater, allows some rare peace. As head of the Shaw, people besiege her every time she leaves the rehearsal hall, but here she can hole up in her temporary apartment and read scripts, meditate and plan.

Maxwell grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which accounts (along with many years in Canada) for a slightly unfamiliar, softened Irish accent. Her mother taught theater and she was involved from the age of 9 in a youth theater run by a staunch Irish nationalist who produced "nothing but Yeats, so my love of words came early."

She took her college degree in theater at the University of Manchester. That city was on the circuit of the political theater companies of the 1970s, such as Joint Stock, Caryl Churchill's Monstrous Regiment and others, which were a formative influence.

She met a Canadian actor, Benedict Campbell, who returned to Canada and sent her a ticket. Maxwell followed and the resulting marriage lasted 28 years, leaving them with two daughters, 19 and 16. Now she's Campbell's employer, having "poached" him away from Stratford and made him a lead actor at the Shaw. "I even directed him this summer."

Originally an actor, Maxwell began directing at the National Arts Center in Ottawa, then became artistic director for a dozen years (1987-95) of Toronto's Factory Theater, which specializes in new plays, much like City Theatre here. But she also freelanced, focusing, she jokes, on plays "with a beginning, middle and end," unlike the newer, experimental plays at her own company.

So it wasn't entirely unprecedented when, in 2002, she took over the classically bent Shaw Festival, following Christopher Newton.

"Dublin Carol" is an example of the modern plays she can't do at the Shaw, which sticks to plays either written during Shaw's long lifetime (1857-1950) or set in that period. That suggests the possibility of doing an August Wilson play, which she has been considering as she finds herself in his hometown.

Plays at the Shaw often have big casts of familiar actors, so "Dublin Carol" affords the special pleasure of "being in a room with just three actors, and three that I don't know."

Paul suggested Larry John Meyers for the lead role, and as soon as she met him on a summer casting visit, she agreed. She chose Jason Planitzer for the young man and hired Colleen Madden as a result of a videotape audition. "I think it's really a strong cast," she says with satisfaction.