Performer: Open Door Opera

For most of us, the word ‘experimental’ probably provokes images of brass instruments filled with washing-up liquid or electrically manipulated sneezing sounds. But experimental doesn’t have to mean mental: it can simply refer to something original, something done differently.

If you think that Hansel and Gretel is a gentle, happy piece of Christmas cheer, the first act of Lewis Reynolds's pub production for Open Door Opera might give you pause for thought. The children may be naughty, but they're genuinely starving, and the mother may be overbearingly harsh, but she is genuinely at her wits' end.