A Child's Christmas in Wales

Adrian Metcalfe brings Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales to The Malthouse Bar at the Grand Theatre Swansea on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 December, both matinees at 12.30pm. It's a solo performance from Lighthouse Theatre, and it's only the first half of a double bill.

If you've lived in Wales for any length of time, you'll know A Child's Christmas in Wales is a seasonal staple here and beyond, and it's become famous well past our borders. It's a classic for a reason, and Metcalfe stages it as a solo piece, bringing Thomas's words to life on his own. It's presented as a way to mark the pre-Christmas period, and it's the first part of A Welsh Icons Xmas show.

The second half is A Christmas Story, a less well-known but warm, funny and thought-provoking account of childhood memories, described as a conscious response to Thomas's own childhood narrative. Both authors are icons of twentieth-century Wales, and the two pieces together make up the full show. The press has called it 'masterful story-telling', 'perfect festive fare' and 'a joy'.

So you get two different takes on childhood and Christmas in one sitting, both from writers who left their mark on Welsh letters. It runs at The Malthouse Bar in the Grand Theatre on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 December, starting at 12.30pm each day.