Andy Karl will spend the holidays as Ebenezer Scrooge, taking the central role in the Old Vic's production of A Christmas Carol when it returns to the Perelman Performing Arts Center in November.
Andy Karl will play Ebenezer Scrooge at the Perelman Performing Arts Center this winter, in the version of Dickens that Jack Thorne wrote and Matthew Warchus conceived and directed. The run is from Friday, November 20, 2026 to Sunday, January 3, 2027, and the rest of PAC NYC's fourth season went on sale alongside the casting.
It is Karl's first appearance on the center's mainstage, though not his first visit to the building: he gave a sold-out concert there during the opening season. The production began at the Old Vic in London, where Warchus is artistic director, and won five Tony Awards during its Broadway run. Its return to New York is supported by Citadel founder Kenneth C. Griffin through his civic engagement initiative, Griffin Catalyst.
Karl is a three-time Tony nominee, for Rocky, On the Twentieth Century and Groundhog Day, and won an Olivier Award for the last of those in London. His stage credits also include Pretty Woman, Moulin Rouge, Little Shop of Horrors, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Legally Blonde, Altar Boyz, Jersey Boys and Wicked, and television audiences know him as Sgt. Mike Dodds in the seventeenth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He has written two Christmas Carol variations of his own, a Hallmark film and a stage comedy.
Thorne's adaptation keeps the four ghosts and builds the evening around carols the audience will know, among them Joy to the World, Silent Night and It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, with the audience seated around the action rather than in front of it. PAC NYC is led by executive director Khady Kamara Nunez and artistic director Bill Rauch.
The season around it leans hard on new work. The Democracy Cycle Festival, presented with the Civis Foundation, runs from Friday, January 15 to Saturday, January 23, 2027 and carries two world premieres in partnership with Under the Radar: The Puerto Rico Experiment, a song cycle by Angélica Negrón with her band Balún and the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, and At the Altar, a dance work from the choreographic duo Baye & Asa. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's The Unsinkable, directed by Aya Ogawa and commissioned by the center, has its world premiere from Wednesday, February 10 to Sunday, March 7, 2027. The Life Jacket Theatre Company musical The Gorgeous Nothings, conceived and written by Travis Lee Russ with direction and choreography by Danny Mefford, follows from Tuesday, February 16 to Sunday, March 14, 2027. The new-opera showcase VOX, shared with six New York music institutions, takes a single evening on Thursday, April 1, 2027.
Every PAC NYC performance plays at 251 Fulton Street, in the World Trade Center campus. Season details and memberships are listed at PACNYC.org.
