PREVIOUS collaborations between the Tamaritans and the members of the Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society have proved very fruitful, both financially and in audience delight, so it's understandable that they should grab another opportunity to work together.

Alas, they have now taken the bucket to the well once too often. This is by far the weakest of the Farndale scripts: but the ladies never shy at a challenge, as their rendition of Shakespeare's Macbeth testified. So what better than to turn to another great writer, Charles Dickens, for their next venture on to the stage?

Besides this being an appropriate time of the year to represent such a seasonal work, Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a familiar tale to most people, what with the miserly Scrooge, Marley's Ghost and Bob Cratchit's crippled son Tiny Tim. Knowledge of the original story is an advantage, because in true Farndale fashion the work the ladies finally perform notches up a fair few elaborations from Dickens' story: interruptions and irrelevancies too.

There's quite a preamble at the beginning when founder member of the Farndale Ladies Phoebe Reece chats away to the audience because the cast have been held up in a traffic jam.

There are other moments of audience participation: songs with Gwyneth (Mavis Clooke milking her presence at the piano), carols, a bit of tap-dancing; you name it, the authors have rather desperately included it. The result is something of a mishmash, with several little revue-style sections, some of which do actually progress the narrative.

Director Kevin Romaine does what he can with the lacklustre script, but it's an uphill struggle. Catherine Teague playing Scrooge worked her material well, and displayed a firm understanding of what 'coarse acting' entails. Regrettably, though, the requisite style of playing was little in evidence.

Nevertheless the audience laughed: not as fulsomely as they could have done, or as frequently, but evidence that they had been entertained.