Dick Whittington & His Cat, London
If you like your panto traditional, then Wilton’s Music Hall is the place for you. Having reopened in September after a partial refurbishment, the venue is the oldest surviving grand music hall in the world and this year it is staging its first ever family pantomime. Being a London landmark, the show in question has to be Dick Whittington; this version is written by, and stars, the veteran actor, writer and broadcaster Roy Hudd. A true expert when it comes to all things music hall, he has penned a version specially for Wilton’s. The show is directed by Hudd’s wife, Debbie Flitcroft, whom he met when she was working on her first panto. Oh yes he did!
Wilton’s Music Hall, E1, to 31 Dec
MC
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Leeds
West Yorkshire Playhouse has plenty on offer for audiences this December, including a raucous and raunchy adult Christmas Cabaret (Thu to 12 Dec) and a show aimed at the under-sixes called The Night Before Christmas (to 2 Jan) about an accident-prone elf who surprises a woman who doesn’t like the festive season. In the main house, Leeds will be invited to the Playhouse’s biggest Christmas show to date (and it’s done some whoppers in the past) with James Brining’s take on the musical that tends to be upstaged by a flying car. With Simon Higlett designing and Stephen Mear providing the choreography, there should be plenty here besides the vehicle to capture the imagination. It’s a show that features some memorable characters, including the dastardly Child Catcher, and the hit song Hushabye Mountain.
West Yorkshire Playhouse, to 30 Jan
LG
Dr Seuss’s The Lorax, London
It sounds more like Doctor Who than Dr Seuss. But the titular creature of The Lorax is, in fact, a moustachioed and rather irritable animal who is on a mission to save the Earth from the Once-ler, a greedy and rapacious tree-chopper. This environmentally themed tale tackling corporate greed is thought to have been Dr Seuss’s favourite of his stories, and was made into a Hollywood film in 2012. Here, blending story, songs (written by former Noah And The Whale frontman Charlie Fink) and typically off-the-wall humour, it has been adapted for the stage by the award-winning David Greig, who has shown previous form with children’s shows, having written the book for the West End production of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.
MC
Eloise And The Curse Of The Golden Whisk, Exeter
Bagging the award for the most unusually named production of the festive season, the Wardrobe Ensemble’s original fairytale has quite a lot to live up to; the BikeShed is a venue that has delivered over past Christmases, with shows including Eliza And The Wild Swans and Edgar And The Land Of The Lost. Set in a bombed-out Exeter restaurant during the second world war, this is the story of a young girl who must find her courage and defeat evil, as she sets about trying to break a very unusual curse involving kitchen implements by cooking the most delicious dish the world has ever seen. The Wardrobe Ensemble is a bright young company and it should bring plenty of invention to this tale.
The BikeShed Theatre, Wed to 9 Jan
LG
The Haunting Of Hill House, Liverpool
Liverpool Theatres have done very well with spooky in the past, having produced Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s Ghost Stories, which enjoyed multiple London incarnations. Here it employs the considerable talents of director Melly Still and playwright Anthony Neilson to bring Shirley Jackson’s famed 1959 horror story, about a house that nobody dares enter after dark, to the stage. As a group of three strangers join the mysterious Dr Montague in the eerie house, those watching are likely to end up doubting their own sense of reality, as Still places them in the psychological position of the main characters.
Liverpool Everyman, Mon to 16 Jan
LG
Snow White And Rose Red, Cambridge
This autumn, RashDash has been touring We Want You To Watch, a show about pornography, so it might seem quite a leap to stage a family production based on a fairytale. Yet a lot of RashDash’s shows have had a fairytale element and, after all, a number of the Brothers Grimm stories take readers into the dark thickets of both the forest and the unconscious. This festive show should do just that but with nothing too scary for the younger members of the audience, as two very different sisters, Snow White and Rose Red, get a visit from a friendly bear and follow him into the woods where adventure awaits.
LG
