A Child's Christmas

A Child's Christmas comes to the Swansea Grand Theatre on Saturday 12 December. It's a Welsh Icons Christmas show that puts two of the country's most famous twentieth-century voices on the same stage: Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton.

The evening pairs Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales with Burton's A Christmas Story, both brought to life by two actors. It's a double bill of Welsh Christmas memories, and the two are often held up as the Welsh equivalent to Charles Dickens's short stories about Christmas in nineteenth-century England. If you're familiar with Thomas's work, you'll know the kind of thing to expect — the vivid, nostalgic detail of a Welsh childhood around the holidays. Burton's piece sits alongside it, and the two together give you a good look at how two very different writers remembered the same season.

It's a production that's proved popular over the years, and the South Wales Evening Post described it as 'a joy'. The material is billed as the perfect start to Christmas, which fits the date — mid-December, just as the holiday rush really kicks in. If you've got a soft spot for the big names of Welsh writing, this is a straightforward way to hear them both in one sitting.

One thing to keep in mind: while the show is listed for the Swansea Grand Theatre, some of the earlier listings had it at the Lighthouse Theatre, so it's worth double-checking your tickets. It runs on Saturday 12 December, and since it's a Christmas show, it's the sort of thing that works as a proper outing with friends or family before the break.