Choice: Christmas Treat

More Grimm Tales

Alas, most round-ups of the year's theatrical highlights will probably have been written before anyone got to see this. Tim Supple's glorious production just happens to be a Christmas show and it just happens to be aimed at children, but adults too should flock to this. Like all the best theatre, the audience are encouraged to collaborate with the cast. This has nothing to do with embarrassing audience participation and everything to do with the marvellous cast activating the audience's imagination with a thrillingly terse theatrical vocabulary, where, say, the Stepmother in Snow White can be played by a handsome, strapping, un-drag-like black actor and be split into two, her wicked self a spindly, wizened hag who emerges from between his legs. The poet Carol Ann Duffy has adapted the stories, Adrian Lee makes music from a startling array of unusual instruments, and Melly. Bouquets all round.