Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge

Carte Blanche Studios, 7:30 p.m. For decades, playwrights and screenwriters have been twisting and subverting the conventions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, which debuted in Pittsburgh in 2002, has taken that tradition to new extremes. In this Christopher Durang musical satire, Gladys Cratchit is not the stable, nurturing wife that Dickens envisioned, but rather a hard-drinking, thoroughly modern mother from hell who keeps her 20 kids locked in the cellar. The play runs through Dec. 23 at Carte Blanche Studios, 1134 S. First St.%uFFFD