Winter theatre listings seem to feature fewer pantomimes, probably due to cultural sensitivity about sexual innuendo and satirical female cross-dressing. Their absence has encouraged multiple takes on A Christmas Carol, while the National has refashioned The Importance of Being Earnest as a dazzling grownup panto. Another option is Twelfth Night, about to open at the RSC but gazumped by the small but glorious Orange Tree.
Despite a title alluding to the end of Christmas festivities, Shakespeare’s 1602 bitter comedy of trickery and revenge isn’t narratively a December-January tale, and includes a reference to “midsummer”, but can easily be wintered. Tom Littler, artistic director at Richmond, sets it in the late 1940s, soon after a November remembrance, its characters bedecked with medals and mourning war dead.
