Merry Christmas to all -- and in "Christmas," I include the great pre-Christian seasonal celebration of the return of the sun, complete with year-end festivity and gift-giving. Happy holidays (holy-days) to everyone else, as well. And while I'm at it, Happy New Year to all, since I won't be here next week, when this space will be taken up with our annual retrospective of the year's 10 best theater evenings, with the best individual performers of the year to be announced on Jan. 1.

• I'm still open to suggestions, by the way. If you don't sway my own selections, you can still get into the readers' round-up that I'll run right around New Years.

• Speaking of which, may I put in a special request for First Night? It's such a great event. Cold is fine -- it's wet that's a bummer. Whoever's in charge of weather around here, please take note.

• Amid this year-end thinking, I've been mulling over larger questions. In my recent review of CMU's "Guys and Dolls," I called it "perhaps the greatest American musical comedy -- securely in the top five." And in August, reviewing PICT in Noel Coward's "Private Lives," I called it "one of the five most perfect comedies in our language. (As to the others, I'm sure only about 'The Importance of Being Earnest')."

I know, these ex cathedra pronouncements can be evidence of taking yourself too seriously, and as my wife likes to say, "best" lists are a silly exercise, "the sort of thing men like to do." She's right, we do, or at least I do. So I should try to fill out those lists I promised.

• Comedies, first. To "Private Lives" and "Earnest" (No. 1), I'll add "You Can't Take It With You." Beyond that, I'm partial to "Noises Off" and a host of 17th and 18th century comedies ("The Country Wife," "Love for Love," "She Stoops to Conquer" and "School for Scandal") -- which is sort of like the time I said my favorite movie was either "Giant" or Peter Brook's "King Lear." But which is Shakespeare's best comedy -- "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Much Ado About Nothing"? Which is Shaw's -- "Arms and the Man," "Misalliance" or "You Never Can Tell"? And which Neil Simon play will his acolytes demand be included?

For today, I'll go with "Private Lives," "Earnest," "Can't Take It with You," "Noises Off" and "Much Ado." Tomorrow, I'll change my mind.

• Musicals are just as hard. To "Guys and Dolls" I'll confidently add "A Little Night Music" and "Chicago." Then there are "Kiss me Kate," "South Pacific" and "Crazy for You" (collage Gershwin). And to show I'm not a complete nationalist, even though musical comedy IS America's national art form, what about Gilbert and Sullivan and John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera"?

So I'm going to cheat and come up with two lists of five, labeled "American" and "European" (distinguished by theme and style, not nationality). "American": "Guys and Dolls," "South Pacific," "Crazy for You," "The Music Man" and "Ragtime." "European": "A Little Night Music," "Chicago," "Kiss Me Kate," "She Loves Me" and "Iolanthe."

• In the news of the Broadway labor dispute, you might have noticed that the striking stagehands were referred to as Local One of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE; Yaht-See to its friends). There's a Pittsburgh angle to this. Apparently the Pittsburgh IATSE local was the first organized, so it was originally Local One. But when New York joined, they took that label because . . . well, because they're New York. Chicago got Local Two. So Pittsburgh became Local Three, as it is to this day.

That's the short version of what you hear in Pittsburgh. In New York, I've heard that their stagehands' union pre-dated IATSE, so when they joined, their priority was retroactively recognized . . . which is not inconsistent with the Pittsburgh version. I went to Lynne Conner's fine new history, "Pittsburgh in Stages," but IATSE is one of the few theater subjects not included. Perhaps someone knows of a fuller published account?

• Andrew Paul reports that "Pride and Prejudice" gave Pittsburgh Irish & Classical its best week ever (see The Bottom Line, below). He expects "P&P to be PICT's first show to exceed 5,000 in a three-week run; it already has broken the box office record of "James Joyce's The Dead."

• As to my "P&P" review, he says (among much else) that, relative to my point about extraneous underscoring, "how many plays do you see these days (even on Broadway) that use quality live musicians?"

• The Linda Kimbrough now playing Lady Catherine in "P&P" is the sister of Charles Kimbrough, memorable as the stiff anchor man, Jim Dial, on "Murphy Brown." Monday she was back in Chicago to do a reading of a new Larry Gelbart/Craig Wright ("what a combination!," notes Paul) play at Northlight Theatre, along with John Mahoney and Mike Nussbaum -- pretty good company.

• Pitt grad Matt Gaydos wrote earlier in the fall to say "Jen and I just made a comic short (2¹/₂ minutes) called 'Psychosomatic.' It's part of a series of webisodes about beating each other up that we're putting together with Michael Olson." Parts 1 and 2 are on YouTube; the easiest access is probably through his Web site, www.mattgaydos.org. He adds, "as always, there is violence, food, and even (if you close your eyes at some parts) continuity."

Next, Matt co-stars on Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick's "quarterlife," coming soon to myspace.com, quarterlife.com and NBC. And in the 3-D real world, he's just closed in "Major Barbara" opposite Kate Burton and Roger Rees.

• Here's an idea for the theater person who has everything (that's an oxymoron, I know): a subscription to Irish Theatre Magazine. Or as a recent e-mail from the "ITM Online grotto" puts it: "What better way to celebrate This Holiday Season than by curling up next to the newly updated Irish Theatre Magazine Web site and roasting your chestnuts by the glow of our brand new issue? More satisfying than a short stack of mince pies, more cheering than a medium-sized vat of piping-hot mulled wine, the winter edition of ITM -- which fits oh-so-snugly into most Christmas stockings -- awaits at www.irishtheatremagazine.ie."

• In 2007. Bill Cameron's play "Violet Sharp" won the Julie Harris Playwright Award and was a finalist for the National Arts Club's First Playwriting Prize and the Mildred and Albert Panowski Playwriting Award and a semi-finalist for the Next Generation Playwriting Contest.

• Last week, Clay Zambo's new musical, "Greenbrier Ghost," with a book by Susan Murray, had a reading at the Curtain Call Theatre in Stamford, Conn. He says it's "based on a true story from 1897, the only time in history when a murder trial included testimony from a ghost." It was developed in the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, selected for the ASCAP/Disney Workshop in California and featured in Merkin Hall's "Bound for Broadway" concert.

• The announcement of the March 9-16 tour will come at the end of the month; in the meantime, you can get early info at Gulliver's Travels, 412-441-3131.

• Improvisational comedy group The Amish Monkeys will perform at 6:15 and 9:30 p.m. on First Night at the Public's O'Reilly Theater -- six times the size of their usual venue, the Gemini Theater in Point Breeze, but still a thrust space with "the intimate feel needed for improv."

• For Tracy Brigden's staging of Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" (Jan. 10-Feb. 17) with Erica Bradshaw, Brigitte Viellieu-Davis and Laurie Klatscher, City Theatre is offering $5 off regular prices of $35-$40 (students $15) for the Jan. 10-21 shows; just cite code PCT when calling 412-431-CITY.

• John Holt and trio return to the Round Room at Hyehold in the new year with his "A Musical Life 2" (Jan. 11 and 18 and Feb. 14-16, 22-23). Added to his menu of Gershwin, Nat "King" Cole, Tony Bennett and others is a version of "The 12 days of Christmas" with each day in the style of a different singer. "I'm currently working on Hepburn (challenging). My Jimmy Stewart is dead on." He got the idea from Danny Gans in Las Vegas. Call 412-264-3116.

• Having last year won a Carbonell Award (South Florida's Tony), Joe Warik is headed back to the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton to direct the premiere of a farce, "Suite Surrender" (Jan. 13-Feb. 17) by Michael McKeever. It's about two 1942 Hollywood divas who loathe each other -- material right up Joe's alley.

• Marcus Stevens has won the challenging assignment of co-starring with Tim Hartman in "The Big Bang," the next CLO Cabaret show (Jan. 24-April 27).

• Pittsburgher Elliot Roth performs in "Our Sinatra," a NYC revue at the Broadway Comedy Club; 1-212-239-6200. He's a Duquesne grad who played at the Backstage Bar last summer and is now at the Manhattan School of Music.

Paid admissions at city's pro theaters for the week ending Dec. 16:

Musical Xmas Carol/CLO(59%) ...... 13,478
Wonderful Life/Public (64%) ....... 2,999
Lyrical Xmas Carol/PMT (99%) ...... 2,799
Pride & Prejudice/PICT (94%) ...... 1,838
Plaid Tidings/CLO (77%) ........... 1,755
Xmas Catechism/City (75%) ......... 1,421
Murderers/City (90%) ................ 800