Monday
There’s a nifty cast including Imogen Stubbs lined up for Rose Heiney’s Elephants, a black comedy set on Christmas Eve. It’s at Hampstead theatre downstairs. Meanwhile, Nina Raine’s Tiger Country continues upstairs in the main house. Little Bulb’s deliciously comical penguin-inspired Antarctica continues at BAC. A treat for two to six-year-olds and parents, too. Don’t forget 101 Dalmatians, which is tail-waggingly loveable at the Tobacco Factory or Swallows and Amazons at Bristol Old Vic. I haven’t seen the following, but all come highly recommended by Guardian critics: Anything Goes at Sheffield Crucible, A White Christmas at WYP in Leeds, Miracle on 34 Parnie Street at the Tron in Glasgow and Treasure Island at the NT.
Tuesday
The fabulous cabaret star Meow Meow is in action from tonight at the Southbank with Crisis is Born. Prepare to purr. Also at the Southbank today and for the rest of the week, the truly great children’s company, Oily Cart, with There Was an Old Woman. Sirens continues to tell what it’s like to be a 21st-century woman at Soho Theatre, where you can also see the bittersweet One Christmas.
Wednesday
George Bernard Shaw’s first, and I often think, best play, Widowers’ Houses, about the problems of the buy-to-let classes, opens at the Orange Tree. Forced Entertainment make their very first children’s show with The Possible Impossible House at the Pit at the Barbican. Slava’s Snowshow is back at the Southbank, ensuring it’s a white Christmas for audiences with its snow-blizzard finale. The wonderful Catherine Wheels’ show, White, for the very young, returns to the Traverse in Edinburgh, where the adult satire The Devil Masters also continues. Complicite’s children’s show Lionboy starts at the Tricycle.
Thursday
The musical, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, starts tonight at the Playhouse with the wonderful Tamsin Greig at the helm. Ockham’s Razor’s playful and delightful Not Until We Are Lost is at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge from tonight. There’s a floating theatre, the Waterhouse, on Regent’s Canal by Victoria Park in east London this Christmas. On the Table, Under the Bed is unseen, but the canal-boat venue certainly sounds fun. Terry Jones’s Nicobobinus is staged by Red Ladder at Lost theatre in Wandsworth.
Friday and the weekend
From tonight, Caroline Sabin will be transforming the new Four Elms performance space in Cardiff into a snow laden forest where dryads will sing, dance and fly for Blood on the Snow, a performance inspired by Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. Nigel and Louise’s Basement Grotto at Shoreditch Town Hall offers fun during the day for children, but tonight and tomorrow it will be late-night fun for adults, too. Should be a riot. Also strictly adults-only is The Night Before Winterval at the Roundhouse with David Hoyle and friends. On Saturday Bryony Lavery’s new adaptation of The Hundred and One Dalmatians takes to the stage at Chichester Festival Theatre. On Sunday, Quebec’s Cirque Alfonse are back in town at the Southbank with the lumberjack circus, Timber! Delightful, skilled and an astonishing array of male facial hair.
Enjoy, and tell us which shows you are seeing and enjoying too.
