Chipping Norton's theatre punches so far above its weight it's almost comical. It's a proper producing house, tucked into a converted Salvation Army hall on Spring Street, and on any given week you might find new drama, stand-up, live music or one of the NT Live screenings that pull in half the town.
What makes the Theatre special is the intimacy. With just over two hundred seats, there is nowhere to hide, for performer or audience. The programming is genuinely ambitious: they commission new writing, bring in touring companies you would normally only catch in London or Edinburgh, and run a youth theatre that keeps the place buzzing in term time. The comedy nights are consistently good (we've seen acts here months before they sell out much larger venues), and the live satellite screenings of opera and theatre from the National, the RSC and the Met are a brilliant excuse for a midweek evening out. The bar is small, friendly, and does the job.
Then there's the panto. The Chippy panto is locally famous, and rightly so. It sells out months in advance, runs through Christmas and into January, and has a kind of joyful, knowing energy that works for children and adults in equal measure. If you're staying over the festive season, book early. The theatre is a five-minute drive from the cottage, or a pleasant twenty-minute walk if you cut through the fields and along the edge of town. Check what's on before you arrive; it's the sort of programme worth planning an evening around.
“It's the best small theatre I know. We've seen things here on a Tuesday night in Chippy that friends in London paid three times as much for, in seats half as good.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.