December has its own kind of theatre booking. The rest of the year I take couples to a play and collect them afterwards. In December it is three generations in one car: grandparents, parents, and a child in a velvet dress who has been promised the Nutcracker since October. The tickets were bought months ago and the evening matters more than most, so the driving has to be right. Here is what is on in London this Christmas, where each theatre actually lets a car stop, and how I plan the night.
Two Nutcrackers, a mile apart
London has two big Nutcrackers again this winter, and people mix them up every year, so check the ticket before you tell me where you are going.
The Royal Ballet dances Peter Wright's production on the main stage of the Royal Opera House from Thursday 3 December to Wednesday 13 January 2027. This season marks Peter Wright's centenary, which makes it a little more special than usual. The running time is about two hours and ten minutes, including a thirty-minute interval, and the opening night starts at 7.30pm.
English National Ballet brings its own Nutcracker to the London Coliseum on St Martin's Lane from Thursday 17 December to Sunday 10 January 2027. That one runs about two hours with one interval. Evening performances start at 7.30pm on some days and 6.30pm on others, and there are afternoon performances at 1.30pm or 2.30pm, so read the time on your ticket and not the time you remember from last year.
The two theatres are only a few streets apart, on either side of Covent Garden, but the drop-off is quite different. The Royal Opera House is on Bow Street and has no parking of its own. Its other entrance opens onto the Covent Garden Piazza, where no car can go, so I set you down at the Bow Street doors. The Coliseum sits just up from Trafalgar Square, and if St Martin's Lane is blocked I use Chandos Place round the corner and walk you the last few yards.
French and Saunders at the Palladium
This is the panto ticket everyone wants this year. Cinderella at the London Palladium runs from Saturday 5 December to Sunday 10 January 2027, with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders as the Ugly Sisters, together on a West End stage for the first time in 17 years. Julian Clary is the Fairy Godfather, and Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers and Rob Madge are all back.
The Palladium is on Argyll Street, a few steps from Oxford Circus, and that corner of the West End has changed since last Christmas. The stretch of Oxford Street between Selfridges and Great Portland Street started going traffic-free on 26 October, which I wrote about in my party season post. So nobody is being dropped on Oxford Street for the panto any more. I come in from the south instead and set you down on Great Marlborough Street, by Liberty, and you walk up Argyll Street to the doors. It is a short walk, the Liberty windows are worth a look in December, and it is also where I collect you afterwards.
A Christmas Carol and the carols themselves
Across the river, A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic starts its previews today, 10 November, and runs to 9 January 2027, with Giles Terera as Scrooge. It lasts about two hours with a twenty-minute interval. The Old Vic is on The Cut, beside Waterloo, and Waterloo Bridge is usually my way in and my way out.
Then there is the one that is not a theatre at all. Carols at the Royal Albert Hall runs from Saturday 19 December to Christmas Eve, with fifteen performances across the six days, in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. Your ticket for the Albert Hall has a door number on it, and the building is round, so the door on your ticket may be on the far side from Kensington Gore. Tell me the door number and I will set you down on the right side of it. One warning: Winter Wonderland is in Hyde Park until 3 January, just along the road, so Knightsbridge and Kensington Road are slow on December evenings and I allow for that.
Christmas Eve, Boxing Day and New Year's Eve
The theatres are dark on Christmas Day. Around it, the times shift, and this catches people out. The Coliseum's Nutcracker, for example, has one performance on Christmas Eve, at 1.30pm, nothing on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, and a single 1.30pm performance on New Year's Eve. Other theatres set their own calendars, so check the exact date you have booked.
Christmas Eve afternoon is one of my favourite theatre bookings. You go in after lunch, you come out into the dark with the lights on, and I have you home in time for the evening. One more thing about those days: the Congestion Charge is suspended from Christmas Day until the New Year bank holiday. On an ordinary December weekday it runs from 7am to 6pm, so an evening performance is usually outside it and a matinee is not. Either way it is in the fixed price I quote, never added afterwards.
How I time the evening
For a 7.30pm curtain I like you at the door by ten to seven. That gives you time for the cloakroom, the programme and a drink without anyone hurrying, and it gives me a margin if Shaftesbury Avenue or the Strand is standing still, which in December they often are. From Kensington or Chelsea that means collecting you at about six. From Hampstead or Richmond I would leave a little earlier.
The end of the night is where the car earns its place. A 7.30pm Nutcracker at the Royal Opera House comes down at about twenty to ten, and so does almost everything else in Covent Garden. A full house steps onto Bow Street together, everyone looking at a phone. I agree the pickup point with you before you go in and send it as a pin, so you walk to the car and not around the block looking for it. If the night is wet, I will be as close to the doors as the street allows.
Most of these evenings are booked by the hour, with a five-hour minimum in London. That sounds like a lot for a two-hour show until you add it up: collection at six, the performance, supper afterwards in Covent Garden or back in Mayfair, and home by eleven. I stay nearby the whole time. Coats, shopping and the booster seat stay in the car.
Which car
For two or three of you, the S-Class. For the family outing with grandparents, the V-Class, which seats up to six and has a wide sliding door that is kind to long dresses, small children and anyone who does not enjoy climbing out of a low seat. If you need a child seat, tell me the ages when you book and it will be fitted before I arrive. You can see all three cars on the fleet page.
Booking a theatre night
Send me the date, the theatre, the time on the ticket, how many of you there are and where you are coming from. Tell me if you want supper before or after and I will build the timings around the table. I will come back with a fixed price, agreed before you book, with nothing to settle on the night.
In my experience the December Saturdays go first, and the Saturday before Christmas goes before all of them. If you are still choosing what to see, there is a calendar of the season on klasschauffeur.events, and I have written before about theatre and dinner evenings the rest of the year. When you have the tickets, send me the details and I will look after the rest of the evening.
