God Bless us everyone! “A Christmas Carol” will be performed at Buzzards Play Productions this holiday season beginning Thursday, Dec. 4.

This is both the first performance of the play at Buzzards Play Productions and the first time the director, Traci Antil, is working at the local theater.

Antil said she has worked for years with Jess Wilson, who acts in this play and directed the recent production of “Cabaret” at Buzzards Play.

Antil was approached by Wilson to do “A Christmas Carol” last winter, but due to time constraints they couldn’t do the play until this year.

“It gave me a whole year to figure out which version of the show I wanted to do,” said Antil, who previously taught theater at Middleborough High School and ran a small theater company out of New Bedford. “It’s always been on my director bucket list.”

Antil settled on an hour-long one-act version of the play that is broken into nine staves, or scenes.

“It’s got all of the best stuff in “A Christmas Carol” smushed into an hour,” she said.

Antil said one of the reasons she liked this version was because people have such little free time around the holidays.

That sense of hurriedness is something actor Manny Moitoso, who plays Ebenezer Scrooge, sees reflected in the story of “A Christmas Carol.” He said many people have the same transformation as Scrooge every holiday season, as people complain about the holidays being too commercialized then cherish the time with their families by the end of the season.

“I’ve always loved Scrooge,” Moitoso said. “It’s an honor and scary for me to play this guy because he’s so iconic.”

Moitoso said he even keeps a bit of Scrooge in himself after rehersals are over.

“I try to speak in a British accent as much as possible at home,” he said.

“It’ll get you ready for Christmas,” said Sam Bausemer, who plays the the Ghost of Christmas Past. “You’ll be in and out and say you had a great time.”

“A Christmas Carol” opens at Buzzards Play Productions, 3065 Cranberry Highway, on Thursday, Dec. 4 and runs through Dec. 21. Tickets are $15, $10 for children under 10. For more information, go to buzzardsplayproductions.com.