A Christmas Carol is coming to Longridge Palace Cinema

The Palace Cinema is one of the oldest surviving independent screens in the country Pic: Lancastrian

Christmas’ most famous ghost story is coming to Longridge Palace Cinema, with its very own take.

With its very own adaptation of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, the palace will see some male roles changed to female characters.

The show comes after the discovery of the Palace’s grand stage whilst undertaking renovation work earlier this year, including amending leaking roofs, dry rot and asbestos.

Lara Hewitt runs the cinema after her dad’s company bought it in January this year and it reopened in May.

Now they are determined to bring the stage back into its full swing with ‘A Christmas Carol’ set to wow audiences.

Lara Hewitt, who has a background in community arts, said: We are keen to use her to her full glory and bring some new entertainment to the growing town.

“I got involved with a local disability arts group as a teenager and have been doing drama related things ever since. The aim with my taking on The Palace was always for it to be a community arts centre and not just a cinema.

“Besides which, there is a lot of local talent in Longridge but as it’s a bit bigger than a village like Hurst Green or Ribchester, which have strong community theatre traditions, it can be hard for newcomers to get to know people. It’s nice that our group has a mix of old-time Longridgians and people who are new to the area.”

‘A Christmas Carol’ will come to the theatre with a lot of excitement and fresh outlook.

Characters will be fit to the cast of 16 adults and 14 children.

Featuring more women than men, Scrooge’s nephew is now a niece and that niece has a wife instead of a husband.

Scrooge is a man who lives in Longridge in the present day, so his childhood follows the 1960s, his youth the 1970s and continuous.

Lara continued: “I like to do this when I work on community drama projects, to make a play that fits the people, rather than try to shoehorn amateur actors into fitting a pre-written play. This isn’t a panto as such, though we have borrowed a few pantomime elements, which we will leave as surprises for the audience.

“We had to buy in quite a lot of tech, rigging and lighting as the lighting system we inherited dates back to the 1960s! When you get the lights in the stage is really transformed, and to my mind theatre is still more magical than cinema, so I am looking forward to seeing the looks on the faces of the cast when they see themselves on stage with proper lighting and a smoke machine.”