Katherine MacAlister highlights some of the top shows coming to the county in 2016

Exhausted? Unable to lift a finger after the Christmas exertions let alone plan 2016?

Fear not. We’ve done it all for you so feast your eyes on our top picks for the upcoming season.

AWARD WINNING COMEDY
Single Spies
Oxford Playhouse
March 21-26 01865 305305 or book online at oxfordplayhouse.com

Alan Bennett’s award-winning comedy explores our fascination with Russian spies and royalty through two short plays. Chronicling the lives of two members of the notorious 1950s ‘Cambridge Five’ spy ring, this pair of amusing and compelling plays travels across the globe from Moscow to London.

This is a glimpse into a life full of espionage, secret identities and even an interrogation by the Queen with a star cast including Nicholas Farrell, Belinda Lang and David Robb.

MUSICAL
Chicago
New Theatre
February 12-20 atgtickets.com/venues/new-theatre-oxford

Opening in Oxford, the new tour stars EastEnders’ John Partridge as ‘Billy Flynn’, Coronation Street and Emmerdale favourite Hayley Tamaddon as ‘Roxie Hart’ and real life ex prison warden and X Factor winner Sam Bailey as ‘Mama Morton’.

Based on real life events back in the roaring 1920s, nightclub singer Roxie Hart shoots her lover and, along with cell block rival, double-murderess Velma Kelly, fights to keep from death row with the help of smooth-talking lawyer, Billy Flynn.

WORLDWIDE THEATRE SENSATION
Stones In His Pockets
The Theatre Chipping Norton
April 5-16 chippingnortontheatre.com

Performed at a breakneck pace, two actors play a vast array of eccentric and lovable characters in this universally loved play by Marie Jones about the arrival of a Hollywood film crew looking for the ‘real’ Ireland for their latest schmaltzy blockbuster. The pair watch with delight as the quiet Irish village is turned upside down.

ACCLAIMED DRAMA
Land of Our Fathers
February 9-10
North Wall 01865 319450 thenorthwall.com

It’s May 3, 1979, in South Wales. Thatcher is counting her votes, Sid Vicious is spinning in his grave and six Welsh miners are trapped down a coal mine.

As the men await their rescue, secrets emerge and accusations fly. Within two weeks, everything they believe in and everything they know will have changed.

Winner of Time Out’s Critic’s Choice and Fringe Show of the Year 2013, Chris Urch’s critically acclaimed debut play is packed full of blistering comedy and echoes a generation of lost voices.

DANCE
Moving With The Times
Pegasus
February 26-27
Booking 01865 812 150 pegasustheatre.org.uk

Four specially commissioned dance pieces are being created for the Dancin’ Oxford 10th anniversary festival. These Oxford-based companies are producing new work for the annual festival showcase to provide an extraordinary variety of dance in one evening.

Body Politic explores young people’s feelings of self-doubt and insecurity through hip hop and urban dance to expose how these feelings can distort our everyday thinking. Motion Dance Company presents a contemporary piece – Plasma – using abstract movement with a compelling soundtrack, it looks at social pressures.

The climax of the show will come from three Oxford-born professional dancers who have created a piece inspired by growing up in the city. Dancers Jos Baker, Tomislav English and Sam Coren present When We Were Youth inspired by their professional careers, performed to music composed by their childhood friend Tommy Evans.

STAND UP
Tony Law: Frillemorphesis
February 19
Oxford Glee Club 0871 472 0400

Multi award-winning comedian Tony Law explodes into the future with a new show and gets back to his shouty roots being reborn as his more innocent, better self.

Oxford Mail:

SHAKESPEARE
King Lear Blackwell’s
February 12-March 19
creationtheatre.co.uk

Set in a basement among towering book stacks, follow Shakespeare’s ageing King and his three daughters in a tale of power, madness and betrayal, as he divides his kingdom amongst them. Production marks 50 years of The Norrington Room and 20 years of Creation Theatre.

FAMILY SHOW
Backstage in Biscuit Land
April 5
OFS oldfirestation.org.uk

Jess Thom has Tourettes, a condition that makes her say ‘biscuit’ 16,000 times a day.

Her unusual neurology gives her a unique perspective on life; one she’s about to unleash on the world.

This two-woman show weaves comedy, puppetry, singing, and incredible tics to explore spontaneity, creativity, disability, and things you never knew would make you laugh. No two shows can ever be the same.

EMOTIVE SHOW
Kite
The North Wall 
January 22-23
01865 319450 thenorthwall.com

A new show about grief, family and imagination, a lonely girl is to live in her grandma’s airless flat in London where the windows are shut tight, and memories of seagulls and sand dunes begin to fade in the silence.

One night a handmade kite comes to life and heralds the start of a wild adventure and the chance to find what it seemed was lost forever.

Featuring puppetry and indoor-kite flying, this visually-inventive, storytelling theatre fuses puppetry, live action, physicality, music and song for cross-generational audiences, designed to transport the young and old, together.