the Chronicles of Narnia on stage was not an inevitable or easy choice. True, C.S. Lewis’ sevenvolume series of young adult novels has attracted millions of readers for 60 years. A movie adaptation of the first volume, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), was a box-office hit six Christmases ago.

When you hear that ace female impersonator Jimmy Wachter is appearing as Judy Garland in a show about an imagined 1959 Christmas TV special with celebrity guests, you should expect a parade of good campy fun. And there is some of that. Then again, note the second word in the title: Judy’s Scary Little Christmas. We may never have heard before of authors James Webber and David Church, or composer-lyricist Joe Patrick Ward, who opened this show in Los Angeles nearly 10 years ago. But collectively their sensibility has much in common with movie director Tim Burton. If Judy’s fictional celebrity special had even taken place, it too could have been called The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Karis Wiggins channels the life of Texas journalist Molly Ivins in a witty solo showFirst they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.%u2

Most audiences will enter with the show’s premise well in hand. The Tuna of the title is a tiny burg in Texas, third smallest to have its own radio station, OKKK.

In Fuddy Meers, the current production from the Syracuse University Drama Department, our protagonist, sweet, sensible Claire (Jasmine Thomas), avers, “I don’t want to wake up with strangers.” Answering her is a listener of shifting identities, usually known as Limping Man (Max Miller), “That’s what you do every morning.

In  the 10 years it has taken to get here, the much-talked-about Laurence O’Keefe rock fest Bat Boy: The Musical has usually been classed as a cult musical. It began with a Halloween opening at Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang Theatre in Los Angeles and has thrived ever since around the edge, off-Broadway and in midnight performances.

Most playwrights, like all writers, yearn for immortality—for at least a few generations. How pleasing it is to think that one’s art, one’s deepest feelings, will live on and be performed again and again. At least two of Arthur Miller’s plays, Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, have long since been dubbed “canonical.

It’s been a great year locally for playwrights William Van Zandt and Jane Millmore. Comedies by the self-styled “king and queen of New Jersey dinner theater” have flourished with Not Another Theater Company (You’ve Got Hate Mail, from last February) and the Talent Company (Wrong Window! from last April).

Offering comfort brings its own risks. At Syracuse Stage, a feature of producing artistic director Timothy Bond-era scheduling, often remarked upon in this space, is that one offering each season should be “comfort food”: that is, easily accessible, uplifting and familiar.

Polls numbers vary, but an even two-thirds, 66.6 percent, is about average. Some of our countrymen express their support with passionate enthusiasm. We heard this at the Sept. 7 Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., when Texas Gov.