The Christmas Day redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge is the core of Charles Dickens' 1843 "A Christmas Carol," perhaps the most adapted and dramatized of all Christmas stories on stage and screen, save the Nativity itself.

This archetype of the antisocial skinflint who finds redemption through the shared joy of Christmas has many manifestations. This year, along with the various versions of Scrooge, led by "A Musical Christmas Carol" at Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh meets two parallel tales of Christmas-time redemption staged by Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre.

Both are by young Irish playwright Conor McPherson and feature alcoholic Dubliners -- John Plunkett, an undertaker who confronts his barren life on Christmas Eve in "Dublin Carol" (2000), and the unnamed monologist of "St. Nicholas" (1997), a fantastical tale of a cynical theater critic who discovers tentative redemption through service to a coven of vampires. That may explain why "St. Nicholas" is staged mainly at 10 p.m., while "Dublin Carol," with a cast of three, has a more normal schedule.

Redemption is triumphant in Dickens' case, tentative in McPherson's, who uses Christmas Eve for its redemptive power again in "The Seafarer," next month at City Theatre.

Further uniting this month's three plays are the high demands they put on their leads. An honor roll of greats has played Scrooge, while the estimable Brian Cox was the original lead in both McPherson plays. In Pittsburgh, these three Christmas cranks engage three of our most accomplished actors, Tom Atkins, Larry John Meyers and Martin Giles, pictured on today's cover enjoying the congenial setting of Mullaney's Harp & Fiddle in the Strip, before separating to their individual tales of Bah, Humbug.

For "Christmas Carol," we talked to Atkins, the rookie Scrooge. For the McPherson plays, we talked to Canadian director Jackie Maxwell, artistic director since 2002 of Ontario's famed Shaw Festival, making her American directing debut with "Dublin Carol."