Adult Christmas pantomimes and shows in London

Queer mischief makers Awkward Productions turn in a very unconventional Christmas show.  Gwyneth Goes Skiing is a tongue-in-cheek dramatisation/‘dramatisation’ of Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2016 ski slope collision with a retired optometrist from Utah, and the globally scrutinised court case that arose from it earlier this year. Linus Karp stars as Gwynnie, with Joseph Martin as the hapless optometrist Terry Sanderson. Expect extreme seasonal silliness. Strictly 18-plus.

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. 

What a show to go out on, eh? The Turbine Theatre closes with The Liar, the Bitch and the Wardrobe, an adult pantomime parody of CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia by Joshua Coley. Fleeing the prospect of nuclear war, two refugees plunge into Narnia where they encounter such charming characters as Mr Topless, The Hungry Beaver, The Tight Bi*ch and Aslan.

Squeezed around performance of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, this adult panto from drag producers Tuck Shop will strike a rather note at the Phoenix Theatre, with Drag Race winner Ginger Johnson starring as Captain Hook, Kitty Scott-Claus, Cheryl Hole and Kate Butch as the Darling children, and more besides. 

Endlessly inventive duo Sh!t Theatre are putting their own messed-up spin on a love-to-hate (or hate-to-love) movie classic this Christmas – Sh!t Actually is a scathing two woman remake of festive Britflick Love Actually.

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. 

Live art legends and all-round funny people Sh!t Theatre bring their enjoyably ridiculous spin on A Muppet Christmas Carol to Camden People’s Theatre this December, running in rep with their more scathing Sh!t Actually. 

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.

For its final month, Punchdrunk’s superb immersive adventure Viola’s Room will get a Christmas makeover – information is a bit scant but we believe it’ll be largely a question of some more festive flourishes to the set and changing the songs for seasonal standards.

Cult cabaret artist Dan Wye – aka Séayoncé – is on Christmas duties for London’s hippest theatre The Yard with a show in which their alter ego vows to stage history’s most outrageous festive TV special. They’ll be joined by Robyn Herfellow as Leslie-Ann, Séayoncé’s murderous, man-hating pianist.

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.

This long-running adult festive show – which used to be called Snow White and the Seven Poofs – returns for another Christmas of rude flirty fun and frolics. 

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.