The Ghosts Of Christmas Past

Some Details...

Guess what - Christmas is coming and with the coming season in mind, I
wanted to let you know about my new storytelling show, THE GHOSTS OF
CHRISTMAS PAST, in which I pay homage to the grand old Victorian and
Edwardian tradition of spooky tales at Christmas, a tradition
associated with the likes of Charles Dickens and M.R. James, a
tradition kept alive in more modern times by those BBC adaptations of
M.R. James' ghost stories that used to be broadcast every Xmas and
made such an indelible impression upon me in my childhood.

But this is a story of my own devising, a full length theatrical drama
set in Victorian Glasgow (where Scottish Presbyterianism dictated that
Christmas wasn't even a public holiday!), telling the tale of how a
Kirk minister offers a young homeless woman shelter a couple of nights
before Christmas - seasonal charity in action. But of course, this
being a ghost story, there are dark shadows from a previous Christmas
lurking among the drifting snowflakes.....

You've got two chances to catch this show, as I'll be performing it at
two of my regular East Midlands "haunts". The first performance is on
Saturday 16th December at No.28 in the Market Square, Belper,
Derbyshire at 7.30pm. Tickets for this show can be booked in advance
on Brown Paper Tickets at -

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3102318

...or you can informally reserve a seat by contacting me here -- but
we've got quite a few bookings already and it's quite an intimate
venue, so don't leave it too late....

Then, the following night, Sunday 17th December, also at 7.30pm, I'm
performing the same show at Chilwell Arts Theatre in Nottingham. You
can reserve seats for this by contacting...

Michael@chilwellartstheatre.co.uk

...or pay on the door.

(And if you miss both of those, I'm performing the show again the
following weekend at my new home -- Whiting Bay on the Isle of Arran;
feel free to head up north and catch it there!)

Meanwhile, if you want to get in the mood, my Radio 4 series The
Darker Side Of The Border, in which I dramatize classic Scottish
Gothic tales by Conan Doyle, Stevenson & Hogg is still available for
free listening on the BBC website -- but the three plays are coming to
the end of their month long run and have only a few days left on the
site, so listen quick! Here's the link --

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cf4bb/episodes/player

Anyway, it would be lovely to see you at one or other of the GHOSTS OF
CHRISTMAS PAST performances. I think I can offer a rich, thrilling
Winter's Tale, something a bit different from the usual panto!