Much like Christmas itself, Madison Square Garden’s lavish A Christmas Carol has become a perennial event. For the seventh consecutive year, Alan Menken and Lynn Ahrens’ holiday musical will fill the Theater at Madison Square Garden, arriving Nov. 24-Dec. 31. (The Theater at Madison Square Garden is a 5,600-seat house in the greater MSG complex.)

This year's Ebenezer Scrooge is Frank Langella, whose previous stage roles include Cyrano and The Father at the Roundabout, Dracula, Sherlock's Last Case, The Tempest Amadeus and Off-Broadway's Booth. Film credits include "Dave" and "The Twelve Chairs."

Past pennypinchers have included Tony Roberts (1999), Roger Daltrey (1998), Hal Linden & Roddy McDowell (1997), Tony Randall (1996), Terrence Mann (1995) and Walter Charles (1994).

For tickets $29-$65 and information call (212) 307-4111.

Carol's authors, Menken and Ahrens, have been busy recently. Menken is helping adapt Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame to the stage, while Ahrens and her co-writer Flaherty (Tony-winners for Ragtime) are working on Seussical. Even busier is choreographer Susan Stroman, whose Contact and The Music Man went head-to-head at the 2000 Tonys and who will direct and choreograph The Producers this season. Original Carol director Mike Ockrent died in late 1999. Designing the spectacle of A Christmas Carol are Jules Fisher & Peggy Eisenhauer (lighting), William Ivey Long (costumes), Tony Walton (sets) and Tony Meola (sound). Flying is by Foy, musical direction by Paul Gemignani, with orchestrations by Michael Starobin and Douglas Besterman.

Based on Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol tells of a miserly businessman visited by three ghosts -- Past, Present and Future - on Christmas Eve.