The young people of Evesham's Festival Players enjoy acting and performing, learning lines from Shakespeare and other plays, and honing their skills.

But even they did not expect to have to double the number of performances they are offering to the town in the form of their free pantomime.

Their first performance will be at The Bricklehampton Care home on Thursday, December 12.

But also, as a big thank you to the people of Evesham for supporting their Agatha Christie murder mystery play in the summer, the young actors are offering  Dick Whittington for a special free ‘concert’ performance, on Friday December 13 at 6.30pm in the town hall.

Demand proved so great that they decided to do it all over again a couple of hours later. 

Director Eric Jones said: "When the 6.30pm performance is over, there will be just time for a mouthful of pizza and a can of Diet Coke before they perform it all over again at 8.15pm.

"And there are still some seats available for the 8.15 performance.

"This is a one-hour special, with beautiful costumes, some music, plenty of ‘wicked’ characters and some scenery and songs.

"But it is not a long, complex production, with orchestra or dancing chorus. There is no interval.  "There are plenty of comedy characters, and this is probably the perfect ‘first visit’  to a theatre performance for mums and dads with young children.

"There is King Rat to boo! And Fairy Bow Bells, and Dick Whittington to cheer, maybe an exploding sausage or two! … and comic characters including Dame Sarah, Idle Jack and Captain Cuttle – not to mention the cat."

Tickets for the are only available by calling Mr Jones on 01386 48788.