Regent's Park Open Air Theatre

For the first time in its 92-year history, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has opened its doors in March. And it’s absolutely worth it: the deliciously bonkers, endlessly inventive, and extremely funny ‘Bear Snores On’ is one of the best kids’ shows I’ve seen in an age. It’s adapted from the picture book of the same name by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman, which I’ll confess to being unfamiliar with – this is presumably a fairly free adaptation from co-writers and directors Cush Jumbo (yup, that Cush Jumbo) and Katy Sechiari, simply because all picture book adaptations have to get creative when it comes to turning a five-minute read into a one-hour show. It begins on the OAT lawn, where a bemused gardener tells us that we’ve made a mistake: the theatre is shut for the winter. He wants to eat his lunch in peace, but suddenly a load of animals start pestering him: a hare nicks his sandwich, a mole slurps his juicebox, a bird scatters his apple. He’s not, therefore, in a good mood when the essentially blameless Mouse (Lauren Conroy) turns up - he threatens to sic his cat on her, a snowstorm begins, she runs off into a cave.  Here’s where the magic really starts. Mouse leads us into the twinkling, grotto-like ‘cave’: I thiiiink it must normally be the OAT’s backstage area, but whatever the case it’s beautiful work from designer Rebecca Brower, who also does the lovely chunky knit costumes. Here, Mouse encounters a slumbering bear… and a steady trickle of delightfully eccentric other

Timothy Sheader’s final Open Air Theatre season is quite a classic one in terms of programming, which means we’re getting the ever-delightful outdoor venue’s first Shakespeare play for adults since ‘Henry V’ in 2016 (when it opened 92 years ago the OAT was Shakespeare-only). We know very little about this production of Shakespeare’s beloved ‘serious comedy’, but it’ll be directed by RSC veteran Owen Horsley, and the blurb suggests it'll be drenching the story of Viola’s shipwrecked arrival in Illyria in some serious Mediterranean summer vibes (and thus technically relocating Illyria a few hundred miles south west).

This musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s picture book isn’t the big budget blowout that the NT’s recent ‘The Witches’ was. But the Leeds Playhouse co-production – with songs by Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab and book and lyrics by Suhayla El-Bushra – promises to be a lot of fun regardless, bringing Dahl’s tongue-in-cheek but ruthlessly uncosy story about the titular croc’s child-eating exploits to life with the aid of puppets by Toby Olié, who co-directs with Emily Lim. Ages four-plus.

The Open Air Theatre is going big on family-friendly shows this summer, with a major new adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s novel about spoiled ten-year-old Mary Lennox, who is abruptly sent to live in rural Yorkshire with an uncle she’s never met, where she finds solace in nature. Holly Robinson and Anna Himali Howard adapt, in what one would expect to be a fairly politically charged production that’s directed by Howard. For ages ten-plus.

The final show of Timothy Sheader’s Open Air Theatre reign is – what else – a musical, a form he’s done so much to champion since taking over the hitherto Shakespeare-centric venue almost two decades ago. Sheader won’t himself be directing this revival of Bock and Stein’s immortal musical following the life of Teyve, a Jewish milkman living in the shtetl in the early twentieth century. Nor do we know anything about Jordan Fein’s revival, conceptually speaking. But you can be sure of a crowdpleaser, with much-loved songs like ‘If I Were A Rich Man’ and ‘Tradition’ all present and correct.