A village hall am-dram group has landed its first Hollywood deal.

Springline Productions, based in Wantage, has teamed up with a Californian theatre company to produce Oscar Wilde’s humorous short story The Canterville Ghost.

The group moved from putting on pantomimes such as Aladdin and Dick Whittington and choir concerts in village halls to producing audio plays during the pandemic when rehearsals and singing were not permitted.

Under the name Springline Radio Players, they broadcast 11 audio plays including HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, John Buchan’s The 39 Steps and Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers – for which they managed to find over 50 individual voices to take part via smartphones.

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In the process they notched up over 2,500 downloads and picked up fans in the US, Canada and the UK but also Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Peru, Taiwan, Russia, Columbia, France and Italy.

One particular fan in the US happened to be playwright Bernadette Armstrong, who runs the Open Door Playhouse in California, and she suggested a transatlantic collaboration.

Under the banner Hands Across The Pond theatre they have now co-produced the classic mystery The Canterville Ghost.

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The story is about an American family who move to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead nobleman, who killed his wife and was then walled in and starved to death by his wife's brothers.

The six professional American actors, the director and sound engineers were all based at ES Audio Recording Studio in Burbank, where they recorded the American voices.

The three amateur British actors, Jennie Cosgrave, John Hunter and Gareth Thomas, were all at home in Oxfordshire. The group rehearsed over Zoom.

Springline collated the sound files, did some minor editing and then emailed it over to Ms Armstrong, who directed the play, and Hall Cantrell, the sound engineer, for mixing, editing and adding special effects. With retakes and changes, the whole process took about four hours.

In America, where the audio play is accessible on subscription platform Patreon, it has had 200 downloads.

Executive producer David Hunter, who regularly appeared as the dame in the village hall pantomimes, said: “The Canterville Ghost is my favourite Charles Laughton film, made in 1944, with Laughton as the ghost and Robert Young as the American.

“It has been done a few more times with actors like David Niven, John Gielgud, Patrick Stewart and more recently a French-Belgium production. I chose the play, adapted it for audio and then had Bernadette make various changes to reflect the American tone and voice, removing all my ‘gee whiz, and ‘golly sucks’ quotes.”

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The ghost was played by John Hunter, David’s brother. “He did a great job but please do not tell him I said that as it came direct from Bernadette Armstrong,” he said, adding, “Considering it was such a multi-cultural cast – there was not one diva to be seen or heard.”

Ms Armstrong  added: “When I started the Open Door podcast seven months ago, my aim was to bring live theatre to a broad audience. I came across Springline’s audio plays and we got talking.

“This venture is a lovely addition to my catalogue of plays and I hope we can find another piece to collaborate on in the near future.”

The Canterville Ghost is free to download on Springline’s podcast site and is available in Spotify and Apple podcasts.

Find the dramas at https://springlineamdram.podbean.com

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