Children’s theatre favourite The Gruffalo returns to the London stage for the third year running, spending a scary Christmas season at the not-very scary Duchess theatre.

Join Mouse as he embarks on an adventurous journey through the deep dark wood in this magical, musical adaptation of the award-winning picture book The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

Mouse can scare hungry animals away with his tall tales of the terrifying Gruffalo, who has “terrible tusks and terrible claws and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws”, but what happens when he comes face to face with the very creature he imagined?

Songs, laughs and scary fun for children aged three and up, and their adults…

Published in 1999, The Gruffalo won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize and the Blue Peter Best Book To Read Aloud Award. The best-selling UK picture book of 2000, it has sold 3.5 million copies worldwide. Donaldson and Scheffler’s other books include The Gruffalo’s Child, The Snail And The Whale, Monkey Puzzle and the Tales From Acorn Wood series.

Tall Stories, the theatre company behind The Gruffalo, was founded in 1997 and uses its own brand of physical theatre to tell stories. It first presented The Gruffalo in 2001, and has since presented it at the Scottish International Children’s Festival, in the West End adn across the world in Poland, Chile, Dubai, Singapore, China and Taiwan.

Looking to see some musical theatre? Find out more about London musicals.