December is upon us, and while London’s stages are positively groaning with pantomimes and family-friendly Christmas shows, you can read about those elsewhere. That’s because, quite aside from all the festive fun, Christmas is the season when London fires out prestige dramas like a machine gun – you can’t move for classy celebrity vehicles and enticing new musicals at this time of year.
This then, is not a Christmas theatre list, but rather a list of (hopefully) mind-blowing theatre that you happen to be able to see this Christmas - which is, in many ways, the greatest gift of all.
1. Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812
Living in London, you can be spoiled into complacency over the belief that basically every major theatre production ever will just end up here anyway. And to be fair, you’d usually be correct. However, Dave Malloy’s dreamy folk opera musical adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the great one that got away, a slow-burning phenomenon that advanced to Broadway via a glorious whimsical stint being performed in a tent in the middle of Manhattan. It looks like we’ll never get that show: but that’s all the higher to raise the bar for new Donmar boss Timothy Sheader, a formidable director of musicals who makes his debut as director at his own theatre with the hugely anticipated Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.
Donmar Warehouse, Dec 7-Feb 8 2025.
2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Almeida’s in-house director Rebecca Frecknall is on a slow but sure quest to prove herself as the UK’s foremost director of Tennessee Williams, and also the cast of Normal People. Following her breakthrough with 2018’s Summer and Smoke and last year’s Paul Mescal-starring A Streetcar Named Desire (which returns briefly next year), next up she directs Daisy Edgar-Jones – alongside Ben Agadir – in a major revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which follows a fateful evening at the plantation home of a rich-but-doomed family.
Almeida Theatre, Dec 10-Feb 1 2025.
3. The Tempest
With typical brio, Jamie Lloyd follows up one superstar Shakespeare – the Tom Holland production of Romeo & Juliet that brought St Martin’s Lane to a repeated standstill earlier this year – with another one that’s even bigger as the Bard returns to Theatre Royal Drury Lane for the first time in decades, with screen legend Sigourney Weaver making her UK stage debut as shipwrecked enchanter Prospero.
Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Dec 7-Feb 1 2025,. Buy tickets here.
4. The Producers
Unquestionably the zeitgeist musical of the century… until Hamilton came along, Mel Brooks’s satirical showbiz opus The Producers almost feels too big to revive. But nonetheless: here it is, the first major revival, in a massive coup for the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory. Patrick Marber directs Andy Nyman and Marc Antolin as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, two Broadway grifters who decide to stage a terrible musical about Adolph Hitler – with surprising results.
Menier Chocolate Factory, until Mar 1.
5. The Invention of Love
Hampstead Theatre follows up last Christmas’s excellent first revival of Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll by doing the same for 1997’s high concept drama about Victorian poet AE Housman (or rather the ghost of AE Housman voyaging through the Underworld). A Stoppard every Christmas sounds like a great idea, especially when you bag the great Simon Russell Beale to lead the cast as Housman, with direction from the reliably thoughtful Blanche McIntye.
Hampstead Theatre, Dec 4-Feb 1 2025.
6. Ballet Shoes
Okay, there’s nothing explicitly Christmassy about Noel Streitfeild’s classic children’s novel about a trio of wildly contrasting sisters raised by an eccentric palaeontologist who then proceeds to go missing. Nonetheless, this adaptation by Kendall Feaver is very much the National Theatre’s Big Christmas Show, following recent hits The Witches and The Ocean at the End of the Lane as a lavish family-oriented spectacle to get bums of all ages on seats for the holidays.
National Theatre, until Feb 22 2025. Buy tickets here.
7. The Little Foxes
After directing the National Theatre’s musical smash The Witches last Christmas. Lyndsey Turner moves down the road to the Young Vic for 2024 as she helms a major revival for Lillian Hellman’s delicious revenge parable The Little Foxes. Anne-Marie Duff will star as Regina, a woman frustrated with the opportunities open to her brothers but not here in early twentieth century America – and who resolves to bring them down.
Young Vic, Dec 2-Feb 8 2025. Buy tickets here.
8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The RSC’s blockbuster Studio Ghibli adaptation My Neighbour Totoro has been the hottest ticket in town the last two London Christmases. It’ll be back again next year, but for Christmas 2024 the venerable company will remind us what it does best with the transfer of this deliciously expansive, big budget and illusion-filled take on Shakespeare’s most beloved comedy.
Barbican Centre, Dec 3-Jan 18 2025. Buy tickets here.
9. The Legends of Them
If you’re looking for a really alternative Christmas show, try this raucous one-woman autobiographical celebration of the lively life and times of actor and reggae pioneer Sutara Gayle aka Lorna Gee. More a mixtape version of her life than a conventional narrative, get ready for some major bass.
Royal Court Theatre, Dec 5-21. Buy tickets here.
10. Please Right Back
The iconic 1927 theatre company returns to London for the holidays with a run for its enchanting latest show, which is suitable for kids over 10. Based on writer-director Suzanne Andrade own childhood, the play – which as ever mixes animation and live actors – follows Kim and Davey, a pair of kids living on a depressing estate, their lives only enlivened by letters from their dad Mr E, which keep them appraised of his fabulous life as an international spy.
Southbank Centre, Dec 21-Jan 5 2025.
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