CHARLES Dickens seems to have cornered the Christmas market in the south this year.
On top of the three professional versions of A Christmas Carol currently entertaining audiences in Hampshire, Basingstoke's Haymarket Theatre has chosen Pickwick The Musical, based on Dickens's Pickwick Papers, as its festive show.
The extremely jolly musical tells of the hilarious adventures of the bald, cheerful and short-sighted Samuel Pickwick and his friends. Pickwick is the founder and chairman of the absurd Pickwick Club, whose members enjoy some extremely amusing adventures culminating in Pickwick's disastrous misunderstanding with Mrs Bardell.
The story leaps from place to place, taking in Rochester, Dingley Dell, Eatanswill and Bury St Edmunds (with plenty of fun and frolics on the ice along the way) and even touches on the dark side of Victorian society, with Pickwick ending up in a debtors' jail.
Performances are at 7.45pm, with matinees tomorrow, Thursday and next Saturday.
Tickets cost from £8.50. For more information, call the Haymarket box office on 01256 465566.
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