Monday
The Wardrobe in Bristol hosts Luke Wright’s terrific tale of male friendship and lost ideals, What I Learned from Johnny Bevan. Rufus Norris’s rather delightful version of Sleeping Beauty is the festive treat at the Watermill near Newbury. It’s your last chance this week for World Without Us at the Drum in Plymouth. Mike Kenny’s version of Cinderella is at the Octagon in Bolton which has a reputation for a great seasonal show. Theresa Heskins adapts and directs The Snow Queen at the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme, which again often does a Christmas cracker.
Tuesday
At London’s Roundhouse, the brilliant Scottee directs Putting Words in Your Mouth, for which he has travelled the UK talking to LGBT people angered by mainstream politics. Greg Wohead’s Comeback Special, a re-enactment of Elvis’s 1968 TV performance, is at Contact in Manchester. Rhum and Clay’s new show, Testosterone, at the New Diorama, Regent’s Park, considers what it means to be male through the story of a trans man. Sam Holcroft adapts Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, directed by Maria Aberg, at the Nuffield in Southampton. Rodney Ackland’s 1936 bittersweet love letter to theatre, After October, gets a rare revival at the Finborough, west London.
Wednesday
There are so many good things in the Sacred: Homelands festival at Toynbee Studios, Whitechapel, which is curated by Nikki Milican, previously artistic director of New Territories and the National Review of Live Art. It’s a feast of international performances telling stories of lost homelands, language and cultures. Tonight Lancaster Arts hosts Sue MacLaine’s quite extraordinary Can I Start Again Please, based on her own experience of childhood trauma, and exploring the power and failings of language. Manchester Opera House has Christopher Luscombe’s RSC pairing of Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing, set at the start and end of the first world war, before it heads into the West End. NoFit State’s circus fantasia, Bianco, begins at the Southbank Centre.
Thursday
The company Two Destination Language consider men, power and language in Manpower at Jacksons Lane, north London. Caravaggio’s masterpiece The Seven Acts of Mercy provides the title and inspiration for the latest from Anders Lustgarten, directed by Erica Whyman at the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon. James and the Giant Peach is the festive show at Northern Stage in Newcastle. Rachel Mars’s Our Carnal Hearts, about competition and envy, comes with a surround-sound choral score as part of Camden People’s theatre’s ongoing All the Right Notes festival. Emma Rice’s take on The Little Match Girl and Other Happier Tales begins in the Sam Wanamaker at the Globe. The first revival for 50 years of Somerset Maugham’s final play, Sheppey, is directed by Paul Miller at the Orange Tree, Richmond.
Friday and the weekend
The Tom Thumb theatre in Margate is a little gem of a place, and tonight you can see Katy Baird’s own little gem, Workshy. Tom Wells’s sweet meditation on being an uncool teenager, Broken Biscuits, is at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. Anthony Neilson devises and directs Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Moss Hart and George S Kaufman’s tale of 1930s Hollywood, Once in a Lifetime, is revived by Richard Jones at the Young Vic with Harry Enfield. Pinocchio, in a version by Christopher Hill, should be anything but wooden at the Dukes in Lancaster. The Borrowers begins at the Sherman in Cardiff. Tonight, Bryony Lavery’s version of Treasure Island takes to the high seas at Birmingham Rep, and from Saturday the Curve in Leicester hopes that Grease will be the one that you want over the festive period. The panto season starts with a vengeance on Saturday with Hackney Empire’s Sleeping Beauty hoping to cast a spell.
