THE Studio Theatre Club will be spreading some festive cheer when it performs its first musical for several years.

The group will be staging the world premiere of Humbug!, a new musical dramatisation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol later this month at Abingdon’s Unicorn Theatre.

It has been written by Studio Theatre Club members Dan Booth and Stephen Briggs.

In years past the STC staged shows such as Cabaret, Chicago and Man of La Mancha.

However, it was forced to stop staging musicals after it lost many of its male singers and could not cast a full show, combined with increasing work pressures on its members.

Then playwright Briggs, who describes himself as Christmas’s number one fan, and composer Booth wondered if there might be a way of separating the singing and the ‘action’ so they could stage a musical show while limiting the amount of time that cast members had to commit to rehearse for the production.

The result is that the songs will be performed by an on-stage chorus of Christmas carollers and the plot acted out by a parallel cast playing Scrooge, Cratchit, Marley and Dickens’s other wonderful characters.

With seasonal effects, charming songs, Victorian costumes and mulled wine for the audiences, the Studio Theatre Club believes this “charming and entertaining show” is the ideal way for families to launch their preparations for Christmas.

Humbug! will be staged at the Unicorn Theatre, Checker Walk, Abingdon, from November 25-28 at 7.30pm.

Tickets are £10 (£9 for under 16s and over 65s) and are available from www.studiotheatreclub.com, 01865 778105 or the Gift Centre, Bury Street, Abingdon.