Ebony Scrooge
Sadler’s Wells East, London, 26 November to 4 January
Choreographer Dannielle Rhimes Lecointe gives a hip-hop makeover to A Christmas Carol with a family-friendly yarn about a fashion designer who cancels Christmas to concentrate on her career. Presenting a united festive front, Sadler’s Wells is also bringing back The Snowman, The Red Shoes and The Little Match Girl.
Beauty and the Beast
Citizens, Glasgow, 2 to 31 December
The Gorbals theatre is looking extra handsome after its seven-year refit, all the better to show off Lewis Hetherington’s new telling of the transformational fairy story. With the formidable directorial double act of Dominic Hill and Joanna Bowman, and a score by Nikola Kodjabashia, it will be big on atmosphere, music and adventure.
The BFG
Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 25 November to 7 February
Playwright Tom Wells scales the dizzy heights of the Roald Dahl favourite, in which a little girl is whisked away to Giant Country. Puppets are by Toby Olié, following his work on Animal Farm and Spirited Away, and the staging is by RSC co-artistic director Daniel Evans. It transfers to Chichester Festival theatre in March.
Cinderella and the Matzo Ball
JW3, London, 7 December to 4 January
Playwright Nick Cassenbaum puts a Jewish spin on the rags-to-riches fairytale with a pantomime that starts when the clock strikes Shabbat and continues with enough bread-related puns to get you to Yeast Finchley. Talia Pick picks up the lead role and klezmer specialist Josh Middleton is musical director.
Pinocchio
Shakespeare’s Globe, London, 29 November to 4 January
Charlie Josephine (book) and Jim Fortune (music and lyrics) collaborate on a musical version of the story of the puppet boy whose route to human status takes in many a moral diversion. Surrounded by the oak beams of the replica Elizabethan theatre, Lee Braithwaite plays the wooden lead in Sean Holmes’s production.
Aladdie
Gaiety, Ayr, 29 November to 4 January
Last year’s Mother Goose at the Gaiety theatre won the inaugural outstanding pantomime gong in the Critics’ awards for theatre in Scotland. Now, writer and dame Fraser Boyle returns – this time bringing in director Tom Cooper – with a family show that promises to be strong on Ayrshire references, political barbs and good gags.
Singin’ in the Rain
Royal Exchange, Manchester, 29 November to 18 January
The feelgood musical about the coming of the talkies is given the in-the-round treatment by director Raz Shaw, who staged The Producers here in 2018. As well as the title song, the hits keep coming: Make ’em Laugh, Good Morning, You Were Meant for Me, Moses …
There’s a Monster in Your Christmas Show
Theatr Clwyd, Mold, 9 to 21 December
For audiences too young for the rock’n’roll Cinderella, here is a new musical adaptation of Tom Fletcher’s Who’s in Your Book? series of interactive adventures. Adapted by Zoe Bourn, the show tours, with varying degrees of Christmassiness, until the end of May.
Into the Woods
Bridge theatre, London, 2 December to 18 April
The fairytale mashup by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine gets a major revival by director Jordan Fein, who wowed London audiences with his stagings of Oklahoma! and Fiddler on the Roof. Tom Scott designs in the famously flexible theatre.
Dancing Shoes
Traverse, Edinburgh, 4 to 20 December
A welcome revival of this wish-fulfilment comedy by Stephen Christopher and Graeme Smith that began life in the lunchtime series A Play, a Pie and a Pint. It’s about a recovering addict in his 60s who reinvents himself as an online dancing sensation. Guardian comedy critic Brian Logan directs.
The Little Mermaid
New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 14 November to 4 January
The New Vic theatre’s artistic director Theresa Heskins continues her fruitful partnership with aerial specialist Vicki Dela Amedume for a joint staging of the Hans Christian Andersen favourite, that puts a circus spin on the underwater story of the Sea King’s daughter who falls for a human prince.
Bananas for Christmas
Eden Court, Inverness, 11 to 24 December
The excellent Moray-based children’s company Frozen Charlotte deliver a comedy about a pair of banana-loving beach-dwellers. Aimed at younger audiences as an alternative to the main-stage Snow White, Heather Fulton’s production will have future festive runs in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
A Christmas Fair
Oldham Coliseum at Chadderton Town Hall, 17 December to 2 January
Taking advantage of the Coliseum’s delayed reopening, director Jimmy Fairhurst of Not Too Tame theatre plunges the audience into the heart of the action with a site-specific staging of Jim Cartwright’s village fete comedy.
The Sound of Music
Curve, Leicester, 22 November to 17 January
Nikolai Foster directs Molly Lynch and David Seadon-Young, stars of last year’s My Fair Lady, as Maria and Captain von Trapp, making a break for the hills. For younger audiences, Aliens Love Panta Claus is a space-age musical alternative at the same theatre.
Stocking Fillers
Royal Court, Liverpool, 28 November to 3 January
As an antidote to the raucousness of The Scouse Christmas Carol, graduates of the theatre’s Stage Write programme turn in a series of miniature plays on a festive theme in the studio. They vary from the funny to the heartbreaking.
A Christmas Carol
Lyric, Belfast, 28 November to 10 January
Back after an acclaimed run last year, Marie Jones’s adaptation of the Dickens classic is staged as a play within a play. Now set in Belfast, it is presented by the fictional Pottinger Players, a band of working-class actors who know all about poverty and exploitation. Dan Gordon returns in the role of Scrooge in Matthew McElhinney’s production.
Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days Of Christmas
Birmingham Rep, 14 November to 18 January
Actor-writers Humphrey Ker and David Reed star as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in their own festive murder mystery with new original songs by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The tongue-in-cheek comedy is set in a Victorian West End of London in which performers keep dying mid-scene.
Treasure Island: A New Musical Adventure
Bristol Old Vic, 4 December to 10 January
Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary, the team behind The Great British Bake Off: The Musical, take to the high seas for an adaptation of the swashbuckling Robert Louis Stevenson yarn. The actor-musicians include comedian Jayde Adams in various roles and newcomer Adryne Caulder-James as Jim Hawkins. Paul Foster directs.
Freaky Friday
Home, Manchester, 27 November to 10 January
The mother-daughter body-swap comedy by Mary Rodgers, best known through the Disney movies, is given the musical treatment by Bridget Carpenter (book), Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (lyrics). Andy Fickman directs the UK premiere.
Weans in the Wood
Macrobert, Stirling, 26 November to 3 January
After his Edinburgh fringe hit She’s Behind You, writer, director and panto dame Johnny McKnight puts theory into practice in a revival of his wayward take on a fairytale in which nobody can remember the story. McKnight fans will also want to head to Glasgow’s Tron for Sally Reid’s staging of his Gallus in Weegieland.
