Landing in the heart of Walthamstow this winter, The Revel Puck Circus returns to E17 with its biggest Winter Festival yet, headlined by CLOWN, a brand-new stage adaptation, and first circus production, of Sir Quentin Blake’s beloved children’s picture book, alongside the return of festival favourite, Fête du Puck.
The Revel Puck Circus Little Top, Walthamstow Town Square Gardens, E17 7JH
3rd December 2026 to 3rd January 2027
CLOWN: 11am and 1pm, Thursdays to Sunday
Fête du Puck: 4:30pm and 7pm, Thursdays and Fridays; 2:30pm and 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays
Previews: Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th December, £10 flat rate
Previous Revel Puck Circus productions have won praise from national and regional press, including: “This is circus at its finest. A masterclass in engagement, tricks, talent and entertainment, wrapped in a heartfelt story about belonging, resilience and finding joy in the journey itself” Christiana Rose, BroadwayWorld ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️19th May 2026
The Revel Puck Circus has become a firm favourite for East London locals seeking magical, breathtaking experiences during the festive season. This year’s Winter Festival is set to raise the bar even higher.
Last winter’s Walthamstow season welcomed 12,000 people through the doors and sold out across the Christmas period. The company has now brought live circus to more than 45,000 audience members in Walthamstow since December 2023, with nearly three-quarters travelling from local postcodes.
This will be the company’s fourth winter season in Walthamstow, and the eighth time The Revel Puck Circus has performed in Waltham Forest overall, including summer stands in Leyton Jubilee Park.
Running from 3rd December to 3rd January, audiences can step inside the magical Little Top tent at Walthamstow Central, bringing live circus experience within easy reach of the Waltham Forest community.
CLOWN: a world premiere
For younger audiences and families, morning and early afternoons across the festival belong to CLOWN. Blake’s book tells its story entirely through pictures about a little toy clown that gets thrown into the bin and goes on an adventure looking for a new home. It’s a story about hope, friendship, resilience, and kindness.
The production stays close to that spirit: the story itself will not change, though a small amount of language has been added to help carry the narrative for its youngest audiences.
Audiences can wonder at aerial performers, world-class acrobatics, hilarious physical comedy, costume puppets, and Pierrot-style clowning.
Circus skills do most of the storytelling, bringing a clown’s journey to life through physical performance, from the sadness of being thrown away to the joy of finding a new home, giving audiences a felt, embodied way into feelings that words alone might struggle to reach.
Upon hearing about the production, Sir Quentin Blake said: “I am delighted Clown will be brought to new audiences in this unique form by The Revel Puck Circus. In fact, I am appropriately speechless.”
Founder of The Revel Puck Circus, Luke Hallgarten, said: “I’ve loved Quentin Blake’s CLOWN book ever since I was a child; it was definitely an influence on me. When we got the green light from Sir Quentin Blake to adapt his story into a show, it was a real pinch-me moment. If ever there was an art form that could be described as hand-drawn, circus would be it.”
CLOWN will also welcome school and nursery groups throughout December, with dedicated weekday performances for Nursery to Year 6. Because the story is carried primarily through circus skills and physical storytelling, it offers a rare classroom resource; teachers can use it to build sequencing, prediction, and inference skills alongside the book itself.
This year is particularly special as the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration opened in Islington earlier this year, great news for fans of a national treasure for children and grown-ups alike.
Fête du Puck: A celebration of circus!
Fête du Puck returns following a sold-out 2025 season, with an all-new cast of international and homegrown talent! A foot-stampingly audacious celebration of the past, present, and future of circus, Fête du Puck (Puck’s party ‘a la anglaise’) is here for a good time, not a long time.
This show takes place in the Revel Puck’s brand-new ‘mini big top,’ a one-of-a-kind structure inspired by friends of the Pucks, My Laika! This intimate yet technically complex tent allows us to bring world-class circus to dense urban areas, offering all the spectacle of a big top in a cosy, pop-up space.
Luke Hallgarten added: “Waltham Forest isn’t just where we perform; it’s home. I live in Leyton with my partner and son, and getting to bring a show like Clown to the town square still feels like a privilege every single year.”
Community and access
The Winter Festival also reflects The Revel Pucks’ commitment to its home borough. Working with Waltham Forest’s Future Formed programme, the company trains young people for front-of-house and hospitality roles, with opportunities to shadow the production team.
Ten per cent of tickets for every performance are also reserved at £3, on a no-questions-asked basis, for local people who might otherwise find the cost of a trip to the theatre out of reach, distributed in part through local community organisations across the borough.
All performances are semi-relaxed as standard, with level access throughout, wheelchair spaces and free carer seats in every show, and dedicated SEND performances; check the website for details.
For The Revel Puck Circus, this homecoming caps a year that saw their first UK tour visiting 14 locations around England and Wales, plus a critically acclaimed run at Edinburgh Fringe.
Tickets for go on sale from 16th September, with previews on 3rd and 4th December with 30% off. Visit https://www.tixr.com/groups/revelpuckcircus for tickets or email boxoffice@revelpucks.com for more information.
