Christmas highlights stage offerings

Four Christmas shows are among this week's seven diverse theater openings.

• PLAYWRIGHT RICHARD KALINOSKI will be in Salt Lake City this week for a reading of his new script, "A Crooked Man." The Wisconsin-based writer and director will take part in a post-play at Salt Lake Acting Company, 168 W. 500 North. The author has described it as "a distant cousin" to his highly successful "Beast on the Moon" (produced by SLAC produced in 1997). "A Crooked Man" is centered around 87-year-old Hagop Hagopian, an Armenian living in relative isolation in the United States.

For the reading, on Monday at 7:30 p.m., David Mong is directing a cast that includes Gene Pack, David Fetzer, Anita Booher, Morris Cort, Kurt Proctor, Jeanette Puhich, Klaus Rathke and Joe Welsch.

The free event is part of SLAC's ongoing "New Play Sounding Series."

• "GREASE," a national touring production, will play Friday through Dec. 14 in Kingsbury Hall. It's your basic bus-and-truck touring show with no "name" stars. But it's also a rare chance to see one of Broadway's longest-running musicals, which quite a few local theater companies and schools won't even consider producing — largely because of the message it sends to teenagers. (The central character is the somewhat modest Sandy Dumbrowski, a new student at Rydell High School, who eventually gives in to the lusty desires of Danny Zuko, because it's the "popular" thing to do.)

The touring ensemble includes Jamey Isenor as Danny Zuko, Hanna-Liina Vosa, a native of Estonia, as Sandy; Jacqueline Colmer as Rizzo, Arthur J.M. Callahan as Vince Fontaine and Victoria E. Bundonis as Miss Lynch.

Evening performances are 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets range from $22.50-$42.50. For reservations, call 355-2787 or visit any ArtTix outlet, including Kingsbury Hall (581-7100).

• "NUNCRACKERS: THE NUNSENSE CHRISTMAS MUSICAL," opening Tuesday in the Grove Theatre, 20 S. Main, Pleasant Grove, reunites those loopy sisters at the Mount St. Helen's Convent for an evening of holiday antics.

This time around, they're attempting to produce a Christmas television special in the new cable-access studio they've built in the basement of the convent. They're also joined by Father Virgil Manly Trott, who gets roped into hosting a food demonstration — how to make a fruitcake, "the gift that lasts a lifetime."