Event type: Theatre

After Party

A relaxed, immersive baby-friendly show where wriggling is welcome, noise is encouraged, and your little one is part of the action. Drop in, chill out, and enjoy something actually designed for the chaos of family life.

The arrival of a new baby is the beginning of a long, beautiful and messy journey. Join us at the After Party, a place of joy, rest, solidarity and festivity as we support and celebrate each other through the long and transformative journey of parenthood.

Combining the beautiful and uplifting vocal music of the HurlyBurly ensemble with a playful and immersive multi-sensory world, this experience offers new families time and space to relax together whilst the interactive performance ebbs and flows around them. 

Inspired by the intuitive freedom and curiosity of the very young and their talent for turning the world upside down, After Party invites parents to embrace the chaos of the early years and follow their children into a world of transformation and wonder where every gurgle, tumble, and reach becomes part of the performance.

After Party is a durational performance for 0-2s where everyone is free to come as they are and stay as long as they like.

Audience Feedback

Coming through the gold curtain was like entering another world, it felt like a festival.

No strict rules – kids allowed to be kids.

It was magical!

It was perfect for our family and our son.

PERFECT!

A beautiful morning spent with our daughter – forgetting the outside world and just focusing on us.

Such a unique concept.

Joyful, relaxing, wonderful.

A sense of belonging in a group of strangers. 

Baby Bards

Join our Learning & Engagement Team for a Baby Bards early years story and language session for pre school children aged 18 months to 4 years old.

Pressure | 20 Stories High

7:00pm

Join us this summer for our 20 Stories High annual Youth Theatre Summer Show!
The Youth Theatre will be taking centre stage with a brand-new show inspired by the voices of young people as they explore what is good and what’s hard about being a young person in 2026: the pressures, the joys, the chaos, and the hope.
 
It’s their 20th Birthday and 20 Stories High Youth Theatre are taking it back to their roots. Expect a mash-up of hip hop, grime, rap and street dance!
 

Performances:
23rd–25th July 2026 (Thu–Sat)

Pull up for 3 nights only with curtain raisers from RAWD and 20SH Nu Noize participants with a Post Show Jam on Friday 24th July 2026
 

Access:
One night will be BSL interpreted (we’ll confirm which date soon).

Come celebrate our amazing Youth Theatre and 20th birthday with us! Check out our socials for exciting updates coming soon @20storieshigh

Best Practice

Best Practice is a show for anyone who’s ever tried to make something work: policy makers and civic planners, educators and creatives, social entrepreneurs and business owners.

It’s a comical look at how regeneration schemes might fail in any given place, at any given time and how mistakes of the past might help us to get over the stumbling blocks.

Christmas Gothic

From the award-winning creators of A Christmas Carol, Lady Susan, Female Gothic, That Knave, Raleigh, I, Elizabeth, Austen’s Women, and A Room of One’s Own. 

 Christmas: a time to remember the past, celebrate the present, and look to the future; a time of feasts and festivities; of holly and mistletoe; a time of visits and visitations.  A time of ghosts. 

 Come in from the cold and enter into the Christmas spirit as a dark and spectral woman tells haunting tales of the festive season, lighting a candle to the frailties of human nature and illuminating the cold and chilling depths of the bleak, wintry dark… 

 Following the international touring success that was Female Gothic, Dyad Productions resurrects a Victorian tradition by presenting three seasonal tales of terror to scintillate the gooseflesh for dark Christmas nights.  

 This dark celebration of Christmas is adapted and performed by Rebecca Vaughan (Lady Susan, A Room od One’s Own, Austen’s Women, I, Elizabeth, Female Gothic).  

 

★★★★★ ’A macabre masterpiece.  Ghostly, grisly and gorgeous.  Don’t miss it’ (Three Weeks) 

★★★★★ ’Truly extraordinary… one of the most exciting young performers on the British stage’ (British Theatre Guide) 

★★★★ ‘Holds the audience in the palm of its hand… a near perfect piece of theatre’ (The Scotsman) 

‘Perfection… Vaughan is simply sublime’ (Huffington Post) 

Comrades in the Dark by Caitlin Barnett Dance Co,

7:30pm

Comrades in the Dark contains themes of political imprisonment, torture, psychological deterioration and death by hunger strike. It is performed with testimony from former Republican prisoners and draws exclusively on the writing and experience of Bobby Sands and the 1981 hunger strikers.

The work presents one tradition’s account of the conflict in Northern Ireland. It does not attempt to represent multiple perspectives within the performance itself, created by the Caitlin Barnett Dance Company.

The piece: H Blocks. Belfast. 1981. Bobby Sands embarks on hunger strike in pursuit of political status. On day 66 he dies. Nine others die before the strike is called off.

This highly physical, contemporary dance explores the brutality and humanity contained within the poetry and prose, written secretly by Sands whilst behind bars. Accompanied live by the traditional Irish drum — the bodhrán — and the voices of former Republican prisoners, this politically charged show looks at themes of oppression, resistance and freedom, bringing to the forefront the historic and complex relationship between Ireland and Britain.

Care: We recommend that anyone with lived experience of the Troubles — from any community — considers carefully whether this work is right for them at this time. Support services are available before and after the performance and a list of external services will be made available on the night.

A post-show conversation will take place after each performance, providing space for questions and reflection, to which all attendees are warmly invited.

The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong by Wooden Bridge Productions

7:30pm

 

Fifty years after his wrongful conviction, at the age of 74, Paddy is facing into his twilight years and wrestling with a thousand turbulent memories. In The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong, he relives the journey that forever altered his destiny. A one-man show, starring Don Wycherley as Paddy, the play is inspired by Paddy’s memoir Life After Life, a Guildford Four Memoir (2017).

Paddy is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness, reminding us that the privilege of freedom and love, family and everyday life can restore us and mend the scars of even the most savage injustice.

Don Wycherley brings unflinching honesty, pathos and humour to his portrayal of Paddy, a man failed and scarred by a flawed system yet refusing to be defined by it. Paddy will make you laugh, it will probably make you cry and ultimately you will leave the theatre uplifted by this unforgettable play starring one of Ireland’s most loved actors.

After two years of touring the island of Ireland to sold out audiences, this award-winning play is coming to the Liverpool Irish Festival in October 2026. Don’t miss it!

Here’s what the critics and audiences had to say

★★★★★ “Don Wycherley is incandescent in this journey from disaster to redemption” – Irish Times

★★★★★ “Gritty and moving… Unmissable” – Irish Independent

★★★★★ “”Wycherley is superlative in this exquisitely tender portrayal of Paddy Armstrong”– Emer O’Kelly, Sunday Independent

“A searing indictment of injustice and a heartfelt song of survival… Don Wycherley, whose career defining performance is of such devastating power, the only appropriate response is awe.” The Arts Review “Incredible… Don Wycherley in the performance of his life… Unforgettable” – Joe Duffy, RTÉ Radio 1

“What a beautiful experience. It was a privilege to see such wonderful writing and acting up close. The play is an absolute triumph.” – Donal Ryan (author)

“I highly recommend the Paddy Armstrong play. Don Wycherley captivates” – Christy Moore

“A combination of a fine script, super superlative acting and a profound true story. Wycherley is is perfect as Paddy” – Katy Hayes, Saturday Independent 

“A stunning play and performance. Don’t miss it”– Alastair Logan, Guildford Four solicitor

“This is writing and acting at its most powerful… a totally engrossing experience. It truly is a show not to be missed”– Michael Harnett, playwright

“An absolute must-see. Incredible play that will make you laugh, cry, become enraged in equal measure. Don Wycherley is outstanding” – audience member

The Story of Edith Smith

7:30pm

The Story of Edith Smith is a new heritage theatre production by Oxton Playwrights CIC, created as part of Her Stories of Wirral, a two-year National Lottery Heritage Funded project uncovering overlooked women’s histories from across Wirral.

Edith Smith was born in Oxton and later became Britain’s first female Police Constable with full powers of arrest while serving in Grantham. But behind that historic title is a much fuller human story – of family responsibility, personal loss, motherhood, work, care and determination.

This production follows Edith’s journey from local woman to national figure, exploring the challenges she faced at a time when women’s roles in public life were tightly restricted. The play examines not only Edith’s role in policing, but the wider social world around her.

Written and directed by Pauline Fleming, a professional actor now developing original work as a writer and director, and co-produced with her daughter Cornelia Cannell, the piece combines careful research with theatrical interpretation. The aim is not only to tell audiences what Edith did, but to help them connect with who she was.

The production continues Oxton Playwrights CIC’s mission to bring overlooked local stories back to life through theatre, heritage and community storytelling.

 

Writer and Director
Pauline Fleming

Co-Producer
Cornelia Cannell

Presented by
Oxton Playwrights CIC

Project
Her Stories of Wirral

Supported by
National Lottery Heritage Fund

Cast
To be confirmed

Facebook: Oxton Playwrights CIC

Instagram: Oxton Playwrights CIC

Website: www.oxtonplaywrightscic.co.uk

A Christmas Carol

A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

A radio play live on stage

Written by Charles Dickens, adapted by Martin Parsons

 Back on tour after its sell-out success last year!

 Live on stage and in person, television favourites COLIN BAKER (Doctor Who, The Brothers) and SOPHIE ALDRED (Words & Pictures, Doctor Who) lead the cast in a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Christmas classic – which also features a rare, specially recorded appearance by TOM BAKER (Doctor Who, Monarch Of The Glen) as Jacob Marley!

 “He was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge – a squeezing, grasping, covetous, old sinner!”

On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge is warned by the ghost of his late partner, Jacob Marley, that he will be visited by three Spirits – Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet To Come. Together they whisk Scrooge to the past and his happy boyhood Christmastimes, to the present to meet Tiny Tim at Bob Cratchit’s Christmas feast, and finally to the future and Scrooge’s own miserable grave – all attempting to show him the error of his ways. But will Scrooge wake on Christmas morning a changed man?

Presented by the Crime And Comedy Theatre Company as a radio-play-live-on-stage, our setting is a radio studio, our actors ready as if for a radio broadcast, and our sound effects created live – all combining to transport the audience to Victorian London, for this 180th anniversary production of Dickens’ timeless tale of charity, forgiveness and redemption at Christmas.