Pinocchio: Adult Panto

Pinocchio: Adult Panto comes to Liverpool on Saturday 5 December, a proper adult twist on the childhood classic. If you're thinking of the story you know — the puppet who wants to be a real boy and gets into trouble for lying — that's the starting point, but the "Adult Panto" tag tells you exactly where this one goes. It's a pantomime for grown-ups, which means the jokes lean into the sort of territory you'd never hear in a family show, and the whole thing is played for laughs rather than a bedtime story.

It's a panto in the traditional sense, so you'll get the usual tropes: the double entendres, the audience interaction, and the kind of broad, over-the-top comedy that works best when you're in a room with a crowd. The story of Pinocchio is a familiar enough frame that the production can spend more time on the gags and the adult humour than on explaining the plot, and that's where the real draw is. It's the kind of night that works as a group outing — a few drinks beforehand, a room full of people laughing at the same things, and a story everyone knows well enough to follow even when it's being taken in a very different direction.

It's a Saturday night in early December, so it fits right into the run-up to the holidays. If you've spent your life going to the family-friendly version of the panto, this is a good chance to see the format flipped on its head. It's not for the kids, but for an adult crowd, that's the whole point.

The show starts at 20:15, and tickets are £24.50 for a full ticket. It's strictly 18+ only, so make sure you've got your ID on you if you're on the younger end of that bracket.