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Henry Polic II delivered his first "Bah, humbug!" when he was 12, wearing a cardboard stovepipe hat and playing Ebenezer Scrooge in a production of A Christmas Carol at the elementary school he attended in Hialeah. Tonight, some 40 years later, Polic will do it again as he plays Ebenezer Scrooge in the opening of another stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' holiday staple at American Stage.
"It'll be my fourth time as Scrooge," Polic said one morning last week over coffee, recollecting his sixth-grade debut in the role as well a production he was in while serving in the Army as an MP at Fort Riley, Kan., during the Vietnam war and another last year at his alma mater, Florida State University.
Dickens' Christmas curmudgeon may be one of his most practiced roles onstage, but Polic is better known for his work on television. He was Jerry Silver in the sit-com hit Webster. He was the Sheriff of Nottingham in Mel Brooks' When Things Were Rotten, a short-lived but fondly remembered show from 1975.
"By today's standards, it was a walkaway smash, but it only lasted 13 episodes," Polic said of the spoof of the Robin Hood legend, an idea Brooks resurrected for his 1993 movie, Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
Webster, on...