Basingstoke's panto, Beauty and the Beast, runs at The Anvil from 10 December to 3 January, with 39 shows and tickets from £19.50 to £44. Checked October 2026.
Basingstoke’s pantomime for 2026 is Beauty and the Beast at The Anvil, Churchill Way, running Thursday 10 December 2026 to Sunday 3 January 2027: 39 performances, with tickets from £19.50 to £44. It has not sold out. When we checked the theatre’s ticketing system on 11 October, every one of the 39 performances still had seats, about 9,700 in all, but a handful of dates are down to their last hundred or so.
The group booking discount with the extra £1 off closed on 18 September. The standard group, family and concession rates below still apply.
Last checked 11 October 2026, against Anvil Arts’ website and ticketing system.
Dates and times
- Runs: Thu 10 December 2026 to Sun 3 January 2027
- Daytime shows: usually 2pm; 1pm on Sundays 13, 20 and 27 December and on 28 and 29 December; 10.30am on weekdays in the first week (most of them schools performances); 11am and 3pm on Christmas Eve; 3pm on Boxing Day
- Evening shows: 6pm, or 5pm on 13, 20 and 27 to 29 December. No evening show on Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve or Sunday 3 January
- No shows at all: Monday 14 December, Friday 18 December, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day
- Last performance: Sunday 3 January, 2pm
Tickets and prices
- Standard seats: £19.50, £25, £31.50, £38, £40. Premium seats: £36, £42, £44
- Box office: 01256 844244, or book at anvilarts.org.uk
- Suitable for: all the family, per the theatre’s own guidance
Which of those prices you pay depends far more on the date than on the seat. The Anvil bands each performance by colour, and 24 of the 39 fall in the most expensive band.
The theatre publishes a colour key for the bands: Orange is super-value, Green is value, Black is popular and Red is peak. The key does not mention Blue or Purple, even though the schedule uses both. Blue is the band for the weekday morning and early evening shows in the first week; the youth group price list prices Blue at £18.50, the lowest figure the theatre quotes for anything. Purple is used once, for the relaxed performance.
The shortcut: if you can go before 19 December or after 1 January, you will pay less. Friday 11 December at 6pm is the single Orange performance and the cheapest date of the run.
Which dates are filling up
The Anvil’s main auditorium holds 942. These are the seats the theatre’s ticketing system showed as available to buy on 11 October 2026, for the public performances with the fewest left and the most left.
| Performance | Band | Seats left |
|---|---|---|
| Tue 15 Dec, 10.30am | Blue | 35 |
| Wed 16 Dec, 6pm | Blue | 104 |
| Sat 19 Dec, 6pm | Red | 116 |
| Thu 24 Dec, 11am | Red | 151 |
| Fri 11 Dec, 6pm (the Orange date) | Orange | 168 |
| Sat 19 Dec, 2pm | Red | 426 |
| Mon 21 Dec, 2pm (relaxed and signed) | Purple | 445 |
| Thu 24 Dec, 3pm | Red | 517 |
Every other public performance had between 182 and 380 seats left. The tightest dates are a mix: the cheap Blue weekday shows in the first week, the single Orange date, Saturday 19 December’s evening and the Christmas Eve morning. The two Christmas Eve shows split sharply, with the 3pm matinee the emptiest performance of the whole run and the 11am one among the fullest.
If a performance does sell out, The Anvil keeps a waiting list: email your name, address and contact number to box.office@anvilarts.org.uk.
Who is in it
- Ellie Dadd as Belle, best known as Amy Mitchell in EastEnders
- Chris Pizzey as Louis La Plonk, billed by the theatre as “Basingstoke’s favourite”
- Richard J Hunt as Polly La Plonk
- Sarah Jane Buckley as Fairy Bon Bon, returning, of Hollyoaks
- Aaron Pryce-Lewis as The Prince
- Rory McCollum as Hugo Pompidou
The script is by Jon Monie, and the show is presented by Martin Dodd for UK Productions and Anvil Arts.
Discounts that still apply
- Friends of Anvil Arts, under 16s and full-time students: £3 off, but not at Red performances, which rules out most of the Christmas fortnight.
- Groups of 10 or more: £2 off. Groups of 50 or more: £3 off. Not available at Blue or Green performances. The extra £1 a ticket for groups that paid by 18 September has now gone.
- Youth groups including Brownies and Cubs: £26.50 at Red, £25.50 at Black, £19.50 at Green and £18.50 at Blue 6pm performances, with one free leader per 10 children and a minimum booking of 10.
- Schools: £15.50 a pupil with one free teacher per 10 pupils, five for under-fives. No other discount applies alongside it, and all other tickets on a schools booking are £28.50.
- Family tickets (2 adults and 2 children, or 1 adult and 3 children): £114, £140 or £148 depending on the band, or £132, £156 and £164 for premium seats. Not available 21 December to 1 January.
- Infant in arms: children under 18 months who will sit on a lap need a £4 ticket, bookable only by phone on 01256 844244.
Access performances
There are two, and the theatre’s ticket panel only advertises one of them.
- Signed: Tuesday 15 December, 6pm. Booking by phone only.
- Relaxed and signed: Monday 21 December, 2pm, at a flat £16. Booking by phone only. It is sold from a smaller house of 884 seats, and had 445 left on 11 October.
The ticket panel names only the 15 December signed performance, but the performance schedule marks the 21 December matinee as both signed and relaxed, and the theatre’s ticketing data carries both flags on that date.
There is no captioned and no audio described performance in the run.
Four schools performances
Four of the morning shows are schools performances rather than public ones: Thursday 10, Friday 11, Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 December, all at 10.30am. They are nearly full, with between 11 and 46 seats left each. The 10.30am show on Tuesday 15 December is the one public weekday morning, which is why it is the tightest public date on the list above.
The rest of Anvil Arts’ Christmas
The panto is not the only festive show, and several of the others are at The Haymarket rather than The Anvil. All were on sale on 11 October:
- The Nutcracker, Imperial Classical Ballet, The Anvil, Sat 21 November
- Step Into Christmas, The Anvil, Tue 1 December
- Dear Santa Live, The Haymarket, Wed 2 to Sun 6 December
- A Winter Union, The Haymarket, Tue 8 December
- The Snow Queen, The Haymarket, Wed 9 December
- A Christmas Carol, The Haymarket, Fri 11 and Sat 12 December
- Buddy Holly and The Cricketers: Holly at Christmas, The Haymarket, Wed 16 December
- Philharmonia Brass, The Haymarket, Thu 17 December
- Cara Dillon: Upon A Winter’s Night, The Haymarket, Sat 19 December
- ABBA-Merry Christmas, The Haymarket, Sun 20 December
- The Albion Christmas Band, The Haymarket, Mon 21 December
For everything else on in town, see what’s on in Basingstoke this month, the Christmas markets and Christmas at Milestones Museum.
Getting there and parking
The Anvil is on Churchill Way, Basingstoke RG21 7QR, next to Basingstoke station and a couple of minutes’ walk from the bus station. For an evening show the station is the easiest option by some distance; Christmas week services are on our Basingstoke Christmas trains page.
If you drive, the closest car parks are the Festival Place multistorey and Central Car Park. Evening tariffs and opening hours are on our Basingstoke parking page, and if you are driving in from the villages, the roadworks and travel page tracks the closures running through December.
One date to plan around before the run: the town centre streets close all day on Friday 20 November for the Christmas lights switch-on, where panto cast members have appeared by the tree in Market Place in each of the last two years.
Prices, dates, cast and access details on this page come from Anvil Arts’ website, and seat counts from the theatre’s ticketing system, both checked on 11 October 2026.
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