"A Very Victorian Scandal: A Magistrate's Tale"

Tune in to Pagelight Productions' Radio Theatre Live show, performed exclusively for the Victoria Park Festival at St. Chrysostom's Church. Featuring Manchester's most famous Victorian policeman Detective Caminada, the 'real-life Sherlock Holmes'.

Follow him, and magistrate Mr C. H. Rickards, as they struggle to ensure justice prevails in a case that scandalised Manchester in 1880: the Hulme Fancy Dress Ball.

Detective Caminada has been written about recently in Angela Buckley's historical book, The Real Sherlock Holmes. Pagelight’s new play takes a new look at the great detective. They also cast the limelight on Mr Charles Rickards, a Mancunian from a humble background, who became a powerful city figurehead.

Pagelight are the writers and producers of A Very Victorian Scandal, which told the story of the Hulme Fancy Dress Ball. Police, led by Detective Caminada, raided the fancy dress ball and arrested forty-seven men.

Reports of cross-dressing, frenetic dancing and ‘a backroom full of sinful behaviour’ quickly filled the newspapers. Detective Caminada had uncovered, ‘one of the foulest and most disgraceful orgies ever to have disgraced any town’. Pagelight produced A Very Victorian Scandal for the First National Festival of LGBT History, earlier this year.

A Magistrate’s Tale is a brand-new take on their original production.

Actors read from the script, along to thrilling sound effects. Don’t close your eyes! You get to see radio drama in the making. It’s a one-night-only event: taking place at St. Chrysostom’s Church on Wednesday 24th June. Turn off your wireless and come to St. Chrysostom’s for 7:30pm. Tickets will be £2/£1 on the door and all the proceeds will go to charity.