So this is Christmas, a time to seek comfort in traditional nourishment both culinary and cultural. In Edinburgh, the King’s Theatre has been home to mainstream panto - the equivalent of serving up a hearty turkey with all the trimmings – since time immemorial, which leaves the capital’s other theatres jockeying for position. What to do? Hedge all bets and aim for different-but-not-too-different, or raise the stakes and try something more adventurous altogether?This time of year tends to produce a bit of hit and a whole lot of miss. Last year the Lyceum disappointed with a sluggish, dull-as- Read more ...

“You’ve never heard a fairy tale before unless you’ve heard it told by a real fairy. And I am a real fairy.” Festooned with magic, colour and humour, the National Theatre’s Christmas production of Beauty and the Beast is solid-oak tradition gift-wrapped with just enough shiny, iconoclastic naughtiness to sneak it past the children. Wooing with conjuring tricks, slick visual effects and wit, its soft-centred sincerity comes as a surprise, a sugar-coated stiletto aimed at those with a weakness for festive sentimentality.Compered by the riotously camp Man in Pink (Justin Salinger) and his Read more ...

There's a kitchen-sink feel to this children's play by David Almond – indeed, nine-tenths of it takes place in a Newcastle kitchen – which adds a certain edge to it. Even though the broad, cartoonish comedy is signalled from the off, there's an initial hint of real-life grimness in the scenario of a little girl trying to care for her unkempt father who won't eat properly, emits abrupt shrieks and is convinced he is a bird. There's an engagement with loss that runs through the play too, a bittersweetness that makes it completely unsurprising that the Pet Shop Boys, those masters of putting a Read more ...

Christmas is coming, and prepare ye the way for a sledge-load of new music. It’s probably not just Stephen Cleobury’s annual commissioning of new carols for the King’s College Service of Nine Lessons and Carols that does it (though he must be partly responsible), but come Christmas every year there is a positive avalanche of new carols rumbling into the choral world. Whether broadcast to millions or sung to an audience of 37 in a tiny church carol service, Christmastide certainly gets the creative juices flowing among our composers.And alleluia, what a glorious thing it is too. Radio 3 has Read more ...

This month’s selection includes two seasonal releases – one a selection of Tudor choral music and the other a popular Christmas ballet. There’s yet more ballet in a new disc from Russian forces, and late-Romantic orchestral music is represented by two live performances from London orchestras. We’ve piano concertos by Mozart and Ravel, and piano duets by Schubert played by two of Britain’s best younger musicians. An underrated American pianist gives an intelligently planned recital, and a recorder virtuoso teams up with a master lutenist. The curiosities include a live recording by one of the Read more ...

The morning after the day before has dawned. If you're not inclined to join the shopping queues, theartsdesk is happy to suggest alternatives. Our writers recommend all sorts of cultural things you could get up to in the next week.See Wicked. This smart, feisty show is not just for teenage girls (though heaven knows they’ll thank you for taking them) but will tweak at the imagination and tickle the funny bone of anyone who’s ever contemplated the back-story of The Wizard of Oz. Stephen Schwartz’s zingy score is one of the best to have come out of Broadway in the last decade and you really Read more ...

As we all have only one shopping day left, theartsdesk hopes to make Christmas Eve a little easier by offering a few enlightened recommendations. From our writers on new and classical music, opera and ballet, film and comedy, here is a list of CDs and DVDs that we hope will enhance your 11th-hour shopping experience. Happy Christmas from all at theartsdesk. DVDsIn the Loop, dir. Armando Iannucci (Optimum)by Jasper ReesThe cinematic spin-off of The Thick of It seems destined to take its place as an enduring moreish classic alongside This Is Spinal Tap. It’s as if the film knows it itself Read more ...

Tonight, 23 December, is a significant night for culture in Oaxaca, Mexico – it’s the Noche de Rabanos. The Night of the Radishes. Thousands of people descend into the zocalo to witness sculptures carved from extremely large radishes, especially grown for the occasion.  It was certainly one of the most memorable Christmas exhibitions I’ve seen.Competition is fierce for the first prize and the spread in the morning paper. The prize was 13,000 pesos or about 700 pounds. Typical scenes sculpted are of the Nativity and other religious themes, but there are others depicting political or Read more ...

This round-up of the freshest new music and most well-ripened classics we could find in November features everything from Miles Davis to Kraftwerk, Norah Jones to the actual Pope, via Toms Petty and Waits, Dubstep and related bass-driven electronica from Portugal, Angola, Denmark and Tanzania, and the soundtrack to Life On Earth.  Our reviewers this month are Robert Sandall, Peter Culshaw, Adam Sweeting, Joe Muggs, Thomas H Green, Howard Male and Marcus O'Dair. CD of the Month Tom Waits, Glitter and Doom Live (Anti) by Robert Sandall When I saw Tom Waits at the Hammersmith Odeon (now the Read more ...

It has hardly been a vintage year for Christmas movies so far (click here and here to read our respective reviews of Nativity! and A Christmas Carol). But Michael Keaton's absorbing first film as director, in which he also stars, finally nails the true spirit of the festive season: it is about a suicidal hitman.For the benefit of the five people still reading, seasonal goodwill is compounded when the killer encounters a sweet young women fleeing an abusive marriage (she is played by Kelly Macdonald to whom the film properly belongs). It starts when, out on a job, he spots her through the Read more ...

As Bob Dylan has reminded us recently, The Christmas Album is one of those music industry traditions more likely to deserve an ignominious burial rather than praise. Fortunately, Thea Gilmore has galloped to the rescue with Strange Communion, an artfully shaped collection of songs that shines flickering light into the mystical roots of the Yuletide season."I don't call it a Christmas album, I call it a seasonal album," she warns, with almost lawyerly caution, though there's no denying that two of the songs do have "Christmas" in their title (she refers to it as "the C-word"). But what she had Read more ...

There are so many ways a dramatic production of Messiah can go wrong it is almost unbearable to think about it. Certainly, there was a palpable buzz of nervousness in the Coliseum about last night’s audience as they took their seats. Did English National Opera really think it could pull it off? Could it avoid the pitfalls into triteness that surely lurk at every corner? How would the chorus manage it? And please God, let it be better than Glyndebourne’s 2007 St Matthew Passion.How do you go about staging Messiah anyway? It hardly provides a rip-roaring narrative stream, and there’s a danger Read more ...