A weekly title believes it could have become the first newspaper to put on… a stage show.

The Hampshire Chronicle thinks it may have achieved a world-first with The Christmas Chronicles – a show staged at Winchester’s Theatre Royal.

It featured a small selection of the material from the Chronicle over the last 232 years: the funny bits, the sad bits and even a few songs.

The night of readings, songs and even a ghost story presented by players from the city’s Chesil Theatre proved to be a sell-out success at the 400-seater theatre.

The idea came when editor Alan Cleaver was sitting in the audience of a similar show of Christmas readings staged by John Julius Norwich.

“It was a delightful evening,” said Alan. “But I thought, ‘we could do this using material from our archives’.

“After all, what is a newspaper reporting on week-in, week-out if it’s not drama? Presenting the material in a show rather than in a newspaper was just a different means of communication.”

The material included letters written to the Chronicle in 1914 by Hampshire soldiers who took part in the remarkable World War I truce on the Western Front.

Alan is no ‘Cameron Mackintosh’ but he was able to call upon the expertise of his education correspondent, Lisbeth Rake, who also directs plays for the Chesil Theatre.

She took the material collated by Alan and his staff from the archives of the Chronicle and turned it into a two-hour show.

Alan said: “The Chesil players did a fantastic job. The show was ‘hosted’ by Mr Jacob and Mr Johnson – the two families ran the Chronicle from 1804 to 1936.”

Just to complete the historical touch, three descendants of the paper’s founder – James Linden in 1772 – were guests of honour in the audience.

The show was particularly poignant as the paper has just moved out of its 57 High Street office which had been the home for the Chronicle for 197 years.

So what’s next? Broadway? The West End?

“There are no immediate plans,” said Alan. “But it’s likely the show will tour the district in one form or another and there may be spin-offs such as audio tapes, DVDs or a book.

“Few papers seem to realise what fantastic material is just sitting in their archives gathering dust when it could be recycled in such delightful ways.”

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