Clarkson and Turner bring their seven-panto comedy back to Shaftesbury Avenue for Christmas

Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner are bringing Potted Panto back to the West End this Christmas. Their show squeezes seven traditional pantomimes into 70 minutes and plays the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue from Sunday 6 December 2026 until Sunday 3 January 2027.

The pair wrote the comedy and perform it together. It races through the best-known panto stories at speed. Aladdin gets his lamp rubbed, Dick Whittington arrives in a London paved with gold, and Cinderella still makes it to the ball in time.

The West End’s longest running pantomime

The show first reached the West End at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2010. A year later it earned an Olivier nomination for Best Entertainment. In all it has played seven festive seasons in the West End, at the Vaudeville and the Garrick and, in 2022, at the Apollo. No pantomime has run longer in the West End.

It has also had seasons away from the West End. Audiences saw it at Southwark Playhouse in 2019, and Wilton’s Music Hall hosted it for three Christmases running, from 2023 to 2025.

Clarkson and Turner said “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Potted Panto”. December, they joked, is now the one month when the show is all they know how to do. They added that seven pantos for the price of one should take care of the cost-of-living crisis.

Potted Panto tickets at the Apollo Theatre

The theatre’s address is Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7EZ. Tickets and full details are on theapollotheatre.co.uk.

The duo’s earlier show, Potted Potter, was also up for an Olivier. It is now running in Paris at the Theatre Gymnase and heads back to Chicago for Christmas. In Las Vegas it played for six years and was named Best New Show at the Best Of Las Vegas Awards.