Christmas theatre shows for kids and families

This Richard Curtis-curated charity shindig sounds like a mini festive Comic Relief, live from the stage of the Royal Festival Hall. We’re promised a ‘witty and enchanting evening will capture all of the fun and laughter of Christmas through a treasure trove of entertainment’. Expect poems, carols, celebrities, schmaltz and very earnest bits – it’ll probably be overegged, but that is very much the nature of the season, and it’s all to a good cause. 

Christopher Eccleston stars as Scrooge as Jack Thorne’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ returns to the Old Vic for the seventh time

Mark Gatiss’s ‘A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story’ returns in 2023 with a new cast headed by Keith Allen as Scrooge and Peter Forbes as Marley.

‘Elf the Musical’ rolls back into the West End with the same blunt-force charm as Buddy, its star.

Hold on to your gingerbread lattes! This year’s outdoor Christmas show at the Globe – that is, it’s not in the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, it’s really outside – is a brand new verse adaptation of the classic fairytale ‘Hansel and Gretel’ courtesy of the great Simon Armitage. 

The RSC’s stunning adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s 1988 masterpiece is back.

As the title makes crystal clear, Steven Canny and John Nicholson’s play isn’t a straightforward adaptation of HG Wells’s visionary proto-sci-fi, but rather a comedy about a trio of idiots trying to make a stage adaptation of HG Wells’s visionary proto-sci-fi. Ages ten-plus.

‘The Witches’ is a major adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved dark kids’ novel about a young boy who lives with his grandmother and stumbles across a conspiracy of villainous witches hoping to turn the world’s children into mice. For ages eight-plus.