Christmas 2017
Brave Macbeth
★★★★☆ Enjoyably educational:
Brave Macbeth, presented by Gilded Balloon in the Rose Theatre Basement, is a beautifully pitched children’s musical combining the Scottish Play with tunes, humour and shameless messing about.
Little Red Riding Hood’s Christmas Adventure
★★★★☆ Upbeat:
Think Christmas and think kids and you think panto – but not anymore. It’s not all about the dames and double entendres, thanks to Nonsense Room Productions.
Jack and the Beanstalk
★★★★☆ Satisfying:
There is a warmth and sense of tradition to Jack and the Beanstalk at the Church Hill Theatre that makes it an extremely attractive proposition.
EPT’s windy bottom
Has beans not has-beens in Panto land:
Edinburgh People’s Theatre doesn’t give a hill of beans for modern turns on panto tradition, just the usual bag of magic ones, as the company prepares the Church Hill Theatre for Jack and the Beanstalk, its 66th consecutive pantomime.
The Nutcracker
★★★★★ A Christmas Cracker:
With enough spectacle and showmanship to keep kids big and small spellbound, Scottish Ballet’s revival of Peter Darrel’s Nutcracker at the Festival Theatre and on tour is the perfect Christmas present.
Cinderella
★★★★☆ Gorgeous:
Shona Reppe’s puppet version of Cinderella at the Traverse until Christmas Eve is a thing of airy, subtle wonder.
How to Disappear
★★★☆☆ Troubling comedy:
Morna Pearson’s new play How to Disappear, which is this year’s ‘alternative’ Traverse Christmas entertainment, definitely has its heart in the right place.
Beauty and the Beast
★★★★☆ Santa… claws?
A splendid script and pitch perfect performances make a tale as old as time feel as fresh as a daisy at Musselburgh’s Brunton Theatre.
Cinderella
★★★★☆ Still Sparkling:
This year’s King’s pantomime – Cinderella – is a more plot-driven and less reliant on effects than many of recent years. It also lacks some of the more interactive elements of panto, but for sheer fun and laughter it scores very highly indeed.
Time for the Tin Soldier
Birds of Paradise retell Hans Christian Andersen for the stage:
The Festival Theatre Studio is being taken over by Birds of Paradise theatre this December with a brand new adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s first ever story for children – The Steadfast Tin Soldier.
