Season's Greetings -review- People's Theatre

Season's Greetings By Alan Ayckbourn

People's Theatre

Presented by special arrangement with Samuel French Ltd

Season's Greetings dates from 1980 and combines the highly comical powers of farce with the bleak view of families, marriages and ‘Christmas togetherness’

As I walked into the theatre I instantly notice the set, which was most impressive and looked very much like how you would expect a middle class family house to look like at Christmas in the early eighties. The attention to detail is quite special. The only thing missing was the television, which was mimed. This stood out to me as everything else was present, except the children who were always off screen. Some productions have included the children and while I didn't think that was particularly necessary, some sound effects would have helped create the illusion that  they were there in the background somewhere.   

"I'll tell you what I've bought them all for Christmas - a gun" 

This gem of dialogue is delivered in the very first scene in which we encounter Harvey and Bernard at Christmas Eve. Harvey, a paranoid,  cantankerous, grumpy and violence obsessed man is Neville and Phillis’s uncle, and is played excellently by Tony Neale. We see him amused by the violent and cathartic Christmas film he's engrossed in throughout the first few scenes. 

Bernard however (played by Phil Hodes) is not amused by this and isn't a fan of sex and

violence. He is a failed doctor who is obsessed with putting on a puppet show that everyone hates.

Belinda, the lady of the house (played by Anna Dobson) is married to long suffering husband Neville (played by Sam Hinton), who seems to have an OCD like obsession with fiddling and fixing things. Flirtatious Belinda, isn't exactly the typical happily married wife and the couple bicker throughout, in fact they all do.

Our second couple is Pattie (played by Kate Reilly) and Eddie (played by Reg White) Pattie is heavily pregnant and Eddie is extremely lazy and seems to want to do the bare minimum (reminds me of one of my relatives!)  I think everyone can relate to this family predicament on some level, which is a good part of the appeal. 

Rachel (played by Ellie Pullen) is Belinda's sister and has invited her potential partner Clive (played by Ben Ostell) over. He is a writer, with a solitary novel under his belt, which no one seems to have read or heard of. This queues lots of writing jokes and stereotypes about writers, one of which is a hilarious drunken misunderstanding about train drivers, which should be dated in modern times, but easily got the biggest laugh of the night. The misunderstanding is from Phyllis (played by Alison Carr) Bernard's wife, who he quit his role as a doctor to look after. She seems, amongst other problems, to have a dependency on alcohol, but then who doesn't at Christmas time, and with a family like

this.    

The play takes place over four days Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the 27th December. For some reason they still haven't opened their presents by midnight on Christmas Day, rule of funny I guess, as this leads to a funny scene before the break, involving the unwrapped presents. 

Regarded as one of Alan's best works, all the acting is of a good standard and you believe in all of the characters and their intricacies. It's very middle class and I'm sure we can all recognise a fair few of these characters from our own Christmas gatherings. There are funny slapstick moments throughout and the soundtrack that plays before scenes is that perfect blend of misery and joy at Christmas. I found it amusing, which is not always a given for a farce, especially one written with the humour of 1980s theatre taken into consideration. If you hate Christmas you will get as much, if not more,out of this, than all those fans of yuletide. Merry Christmas everyone, only thirty nine sleeps till Christmas day!

Frank Cromartie Murphy                                              *photo credit Jim Mohan