Adult Christmas pantomimes and shows in London

The Lost Estate’s long-running seasonal show The Great Christmas Feast plunges visitors into Victorian London on Christmas Eve 1843, into the heart of Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol. For the hefty ticket prices you’ll be treated to a performance of the tale, which combines theatre and music, and served up a three-course Victorian feasting menu (think confit duck, terrine and plum pudding ice cream). 

What’s more Christmassy than visiting Santa’s grotto? Going for a pint or two with the man in red in his favourite boozer, of course. Humbug, an immersive Christmas dive bar, allows you to do just that.

Where family pantos tend to play it safe with variants on just a handful of fairy stories, the London adult pantomime scene is a lot more liberated: Jodie Prenger and Bobby Delaney’s Homo Alone is a queer adult spin on timeless kids’ Christmas movie Home Alone. 

Formerly the festival staple of defunct gay venue Above the Stag, the annual adult panto from Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper has bloomed at the substantially larger Charing Cross Theatre – it’s probably about the closest the smutty genre has to a prestige flagship show. 

This phenomonal clown show-slash-avant garden agony aunt session is back after total selloiut success earlier in the year. It is, in a very real sense, the perfect alternatuve Chrismas night out.

The much loved cabaret spectacular returns for its umpteenth season in London, once again playing in the Spiegeltent in Leicester Square. 

The West End's premier piss artists are taking up residence in Leicester Square Theatre this Christmas, with a musical romp through Dickens' timeless story A Christmas Carol. As ever, one cast member is genuinely drunk. 

A sensation on Broadway, this cheerily ludicrous cabaret-style musical asks the – not entirely serious – question ‘but what if we saw the events of James Cameron’s smash hit 1997 film ”Titanic” from the perspective of Celine Dion?’. It begins its open-ended West End run just in time for Christmas party season.

You get the feeling that writer/director Mark Shanahan really likes Sherlock Holmes and isn’t that into Dickens in this cult US mash-up, returning for its third festive season at the Marylebone Theatre.

Following Tossed, Cracked, Pricked, Slipped, Rubbed and Goosed, the RVT’s annual monosyllabic adult panto is back with Wolfed, which you might well have guessed is a spin on the Little Red Riding Hood story.