Pick of the pantos

Everyone knows the story of Sleeping Beauty, right? Not at Glasgow's Tron theatre apparently. Eeting Beauty finds its luckless heroine forced to eat for 100 years straight. 'It's as daft as it sounds,' wrote Rian Evans who enjoyed the 'lip-smacking performances' including Barrie Hunter's turn as baddie Uncle Bumbleerie Photograph: Douglas Robertson

The Lyric Hammersmith usually puts on a popular Christmas production. This year, they're staging Told By an Idiot's Beauty and the Beast starring Lisa Hammond and Leo Wringer (above). For Lyn Gardner, the show 'walks a tightrope between the comic and the serious' and is 'ragged around the edges and full of charm' Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Across town, Dick Whittington proves that Hackney Empire is 'the cat's whiskers when it comes to delivering the perfect family Christmas entertainment'. Lyn Gardner thought the show 'treats the panto genre not as a joke but as a format that deserves to be lavished with love, respect and non-stop sparkle' Photograph: PR

Actor-writer-director Berwick Kaler is a panto legend at York's Theatre Royal. This year he's served up a popular version of Sinbad the Sailor. Alfred Hickling enjoyed the show: 'a fantastic family pantomime' Photograph: PR

One of the many American stars appearing in panto this year is Paul Michael Glaser, aka Starsky from Starsky and Hutch. He's swapped California for Bromley to play Captain Hook in Peter Pan Photograph: PR

Another Peter Pan is playing at Birmingham Rep: 'Rachel Kavanaugh's production tries hard, looks a treat and offers some fun along the way,' says Lyn Gardner Photograph: Tristram Kenton

And you need a dose of Dickens at Christmas. The spirit of A Christmas Carol is summoned in Anthony Neilson's God in Ruins at London's Soho theatre. Michael Billington found it 'cynically witty' but was was 'turned off by its mixture of coarseness and whimsy' Photograph: Tristram Kenton