Event

Radio show: A Christmas Carol

With live music and sound effects performed by the cast, LBSC will present this holiday classic in the 1939 live radio tradition, in front of an audience, webcasting live on our website. Showtimes are Friday and Saturday, December 20th and 21st, at 8pm, Sunday, December 22nd at 2pm. All tickets are $10.00. Performances are at the Richard Goad Theatre, 4250 Atlantic, in Long Beach.

Before there was television, there was Lionel Barrymore every year on the radio as Ebenezer Scrooge, with a script written and narrated by Orson Welles. LBSC has revived this annual ritual and, for the second year in a row, will be performing this script before a live audience.

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in celebration of the Victorian Christmas traditions, which drew heavily on pagan symbols like yule logs, holly berries, and ghost stories. It was said that on Christmas Eve, ghosts could walk the earth and finish unsettled business, as we see Marley do by visiting Scrooge. The line between the living and the dead, light and dark, was at its faintest during the winter solstice, which was originally a time of festival, celebrating the return of the light after the longest night of the year.

As part of his introduction to an anthology of Christmas ghost stories titled "Told After Supper" in 1891, British humorist Jerome K. Jerome wrote, "Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about specters."

LBSC keeps classic traditions alive at The Richard Goad Theatre. We invite you to come crush a cup of hot cider with us and enjoy this annual holiday presentation, perhaps the most famous ghost story of them all!