Month: January 2025

Little Wolf knows about pantos. Success in nine categories in the Great British Pantomime Awards over the past six years speaks for itself. So any new production by the company has to be taken seriously, if you know what I mean. Cinderella is a typical Little Wolf staging: a visually glittering spectacular with astounding special… Continue reading Cinderella

It is 20 December 1933, and three strangers are impelled to take an overnight train from London’s Paddington to Cornwall. They are from different backgrounds, a medical doctor, Gordon Henderson, a dock worker and family man, James Macdonald, and an aristocrat, Lady Penelope Cunningham, but they share the same mission. If they reach Montague Manor… Continue reading Montague’s Millions

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK finalist Divina De Campo as evil Queen Morgiana steals the show in this year’s panto at Leicester’s De Montfort Hall. And never mind the poisoned apple, her heels are lethal. Imagine Theatre and De Montfort Hall have got a great team going behind the annual panto production, with several of the cast… Continue reading Snow White

Poznan Opera is celebrating the 120th anniversary of the birth and the 55th anniversary of the death of Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969), one of Poland’s major modern playwrights. Every year between 1964 and 1975, British theatre impresario Peter Daubeny would organise a World Theatre Season, bringing foreign theatre companies to the Aldwych Theatre. One of the plays was… Continue reading The Marriage (Ślub)

The magnificence of Broadway Theatre’s renovated Art Deco interior seems to positively shimmer in the reflected sparkle of this year’s panto, Sleeping Beauty. At the helm is “acclaimed panto legend” Susie McKenna (hyperbole justified), so this is a show that is everything a panto should be. Written by McKenna, this Beauty is an up-to-date heroine,… Continue reading Sleeping Beauty

Narnia’s origin story, The Magician’s Nephew, proves apt seasonal programming for Belfast’s Sanctuary Theatre, a stone’s throw from where C S Lewis was born, in a production by Bright Umbrella marked with agreeably old-fashioned charm. Director Patsy Montgomery-Hughes makes imaginative use of the repurposed church venue, playing on, off and below the stage, the set a… Continue reading The Magician’s Nephew

A new Nutcracker, the company’s eleventh iteration, to celebrate English National Ballet’s 75th birthday, and a new artistic director at the helm… Wayne Eagling’s version (designer Peter Farmer), created in 2010, with its hot air balloon and King Rat with skull head and eyes like headlights, has made a timely exit. A very different one… Continue reading Nutcracker

It’s that blooming time of year again, and Father Christmas has a busy night ahead. Pins and Needles has recreated Raymond Briggs’s much-loved cartoons to bring a day in the life of Santa to delight audiences young and not so young. Nathan Masterson is a rather grumpy St Nick whose dreams of a holiday in… Continue reading Father Christmas

For the third time in ten years, Derby Theatre is producing A Christmas Carol, described in the programme as a “timeless tale of redemption which captures the true spirit of Christmas”. The 2024 adaptation is by Mike Kenny, whose work has regularly been performed on the Derby Theatre stage. Shortly after Sarah Brigham took over as… Continue reading A Christmas Carol