When I lived in the Caribbean in my twenties, one of the books I found at the bottom of the remaindered bin of Kingston’s largest book shop was Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin. I read it without any real sense of its context but there was something about its central idea that struck a chord with me. Perhaps it was living in a society where death and violence were part of everyday life, perhaps it was my own rather bumbling efforts at understanding existentialism that made it remarkable. Esslin talked a great deal about Waiting for Godot.  

You approach the theatre via a cobbled side street and you’re harangued by a Salvation Army officer, pleading with you not to go inside this house of ill-repute. The City Varieties is an under-appreciated jewel of a venue, a Victorian music hall recently reopened after an expensive refit. The carpets are no longer sticky underfoot and the seats are slightly comfier. Fortunately, not much else has changed. This is an extraordinary time capsule of a place.

Popular operatic love stories by Puccini, Wagner and Mozart dominate the regional scene in 2012, but key talents like producer Tim Albery in Leeds, Lothar Koenigs in Cardiff and David McVicar in Glasgow all promise significant stage experiences.

So, Christmas again then. Ho ho ho. It comes around every year. Cards, crackers, baubles, TV specials. And panto. I am a playwright. I write mostly for children and their families. I tend not to say I'm a children's writer because it's rare that a child has made the decision to come to one of my plays. A parent, teacher or loving adult has made that decision and forked out the money. Children can't access my work by turning on the telly or going to the library. So all my writing is of necessity aimed at two audiences.

Revived with almost indecent haste, Jo Davies’s 2010 production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore now feels even more polished and slick. Slickness is not a derogatory term here; this staging hits the spot in pretty much every way – musically, dramatically and visually.

It’s easy to accuse opera companies in these straitened times of wanting to play safe. Opera North’s 2011-12 season is slightly slimmer than one would expect, but includes five new productions, and the revivals fully deserve their resurrection. Ruddigore is one. Tim Albery’s 1950s update of Madam Butterfly, first performed in 2007, is the other, and it's been given a classy resurrection here.

The Yorkshire aphorism, "There's nowt so queer as folks", might have been coined to describe the row. The alteration of a single word in a community opera wracked by furore over claimed homophobia has saved it from being banned. Opera North has announced that Beached, a project with children written by Lee Hall (writer of Billy Elliot), will go ahead next week after all.

After years of planning, Opera North's Ring cycle gets under way. The orchestra pit at the Leeds Grand Theatre is too small for Wagner's oversized orchestra. So this is a concert staging, to be repeated in the coming months at The Sage Gateshead, Birmingham's Symphony Hall and The Lowry in Salford. It's really a blessing, meaning that production staff don't have to grapple with Wagner's extravagant stage demands in order to make the impossible appear tangible. What Opera North have done is engage lighting designer Peter Mumford to create a concert staging.

David Nixon has been artistic director of Northern Ballet for a decade, and it’s probably safe to say he is the king of the story ballet: Wuthering Heights, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Madame Butterfly, Dracula – if it’s got a story, he is, seemingly, willing to tell it. As Christopher Wheeldon’s recent Alice in Wonderland for the Royal Ballet showed, this is not as easy as might first appear. Nixon shoots straight from the hip: he is interested in narrative, he loves answering the question, “What happened then?”

The trick is to transform something relatively easy into something dazzling and bewilderingly complex. Seeing the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is like watching eight masters of close-up magic. You’re not quite sure where to look, unable to believe quite what you’re hearing. These are boom times for the four-string ukulele. You can pick up a functional instrument for a tenner and learn three chords in five minutes, meaning that a huge repertoire of Western pop songs is yours for the taking. Simply strumming isn’t particularly difficult. But what the Ukulele Orchestra do is pluck, pick, slap, whistle, shout, hum and harmonise, and they do so effortlessly.