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Clockhart Boy |
Shows of Christmas past, present and future
ON the first week of Christmas, London’s Theatreland gives to thee: one Mother Goose, two Michael Rosens, three Christmas Carols, a gaggle of pantos, umpteen fairy tales, and a Gruffalo in a pear tree. Well, it’s in a theatre, actually.
As the festive season looms large, here’s a taster menu of some of the family show highlights on offer over the holidays.
First, there’s the headliners. Rowan Atkinson is to scale new heights of villainy as Fagin in Cameron Mackintosh’s 100-person-plus stage show of Oliver! Previews of the classic musical start at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane next week.
Keith Allen, famous hellraiser and father of Lily, is already camping it up as the raucous buccaneer Long John Silver in Treasure Island at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
The much-anticipated Carousel, the story of smooth-talking philanderer Billy Bigelow, is at the Savoy Theatre; in monstrous contrast is The Gruffalo at the Duchess Theatre, about a wily mouse and a beastly creature.
Audiences that look further than the West End, however, will be equally rewarded. Following the runaway success of Dick Whittington last year, Susie McKenna returns with more, hopefully, of the same mayhem, spectacle, and comedy in Mother Goose at the Hackney Empire. The magnificent Clive Rowe – arguably the greatest panto Dame around – is back too as the hapless farmer given a goose that lays golden eggs.
There’s more panto in Cinderella at Euston’s Shaw Theatre, starting next week. The stellar Britt Ekland is the Fairy Godmother and Dominic Littlewood – him off the telly – plays Buttons.
Dance enthusiasts will love Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands and Angelmoth, the two Sadler’s Wells shows this season.
For a fairytale with a twist, the Barbican has been transformed for Catherine Wheels Theatre Company’s eerie promenade production of Hansel and Gretel. Each visitor must retread the steps of the sweet-toothed children.
Fantastical flights of fancy abound in The Little Prince at Hampstead Theatre, Swiss Cottage, in an acclaimed musical adaptation by Anthony Clarke. Perennial Christmas favourite The Snowman is back at the Peacock Theatre, and there’s a host of other promising book-to-stage transfers: The Nightmare Before Christmas (artsdepot), Horrid Henry (Trafalgar Studios), The Jungle Book (UCL Bloomsbury), to name a few.
Wind in the Willows, at the wonderful Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead, ought to be a sweetly anarchic tale. Director Harry Meacher is at the helm – for those who don’t know, that’s a very good thing.
Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen does a special one-off double bill of his shows We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and The Big Book of Bad Things at the Little Angel Theatre in Islington on December 13.
Meanwhile, across the road, the King’s Head Theatre has Boys of the Empire, an uproarious political comedy from the creator of Taggart, and a 22-cast version of A Christmas Carol, adapted by Phil Wilmott.
Despite his age, it seems Dickens is still the preferred brand name for Christmas; there’s another Carol at the Jackson’s Lane Community Theatre and an impressively ambitious, wild contemporary Carol at The Lion and Unicorn in Kentish Town, courtesy of West End star Ray Shell.
If that’s not enough, how about John Michael Swinbank’s Christmas cabaret of Noel Coward songs, Noel at Noel, at the New End; Aladdin – the opera – at the Rosemary Branch; the hi-energy Clockheart Boy at the Cochrane; or the UK premiere of the Sondheim musical Putting It Together at Theatro Technis?
Is that enough for you?
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