cast list
Catherine Tate, Mark Gatiss, David Troughton, Nicola Walker, Oliver Chris, Katherine Parkinson, Jenna Russell, Neil Stuke, Marc Wootton
directed by
Marianne Elliott
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Alan Ayckbourn once explained to his agent Peggy Ramsay how “Christmas was
a gift to a dramatist. You’re always looking for a reason to stick a group of people
together who can’t stand each other, aren’t you?”
So, as a playwright famed for dissecting the dysfunctional relationships of
middle-class, suburban couples it’s not surprising that several of his plays are
set at Yuletide when, trapped together for several days in enforced merriment,
the simmering tensions of daily domestic life come to the boil in dramatic style.
Ayckbourn’s 1980 black comedy Season’s Greetings is one of his very best
plays, here given the well-rounded, ensemble production it deserves.
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Neville and Belinda are hosting Christmas for family and friends, but as he
prefers to play around with gizmos, she is left to do the organizing, in a now
passionless marriage. Neville’s mate Eddie is equally immature, neglecting his
wife Pattie pregnant with their fourth child. Neville’s sister Phyllis and her husband
Bernard, in contrast, are unhappily childless, as she turns to drink and he bores
children to death with his dire puppet show.
Meantime, on-the-shelf Rachel is desperately hoping that recently divorced
novelist Clive will be the one, though he seems more interested in her sister Belinda.
And Neville’s Uncle Harvey, a retired security guard who watches violent films on
TV and buys the kids guns for presents, is just about ready to explode.
Ayckbourn has rarely been funnier or more painful, often at the same time. His
genius is to show how people’s happiness quietly slips away in mundane absurdity,
while entertaining us hugely within a perfectly structured play. As so often in his
works, the female characters are more sympathetic then the males. It’s also a nice
touch that, although frequently alluded to, we never see any of the children, as none of
the adults on stage have fully grown up themselves.
Marianne Elliott has wisely decided not to update the play, with its references to
technologies of the time, but concentrates on creating a beautifully realized scenario
of ridiculous relations and recognizable rituals. Rae Smith’s impressively detailed
three-floor set carefully demarcates the various parts of the house, each of which in
classic Ayckbourn style represents certain aspects of the tightly knit story.
The cast is uniformly strong. Neil Stuke’s self-centredly geeky Neville and
Catherine Tate’s bossily house-proud Belinda live separate lives under the same roof.
Marc Wootton’s slobbish Eddie is hen-pecked by Katherine Parkinson’s frustrated
Pattie, while Mark Gatiss’s primly repressed Bernard is despised by Jenna Russell’s
raucously clumsy Phyllis. Nicola Walker’s Rachel is nervously needy, and Oliver
Chris’s Clive manages to upset everyone with his inept niceness. Finally, for David
Troughton’s belligerent buffoon Harvey fantasy and reality eventually collide in
spectacular fashion.
If you are looking for a tarter alternative to the usual sugar-plum Christmas
shows, this excellent revival of Season’s Greetings should satisfy.
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London reviews
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For more theatre reviews, come and visit us at Exeunt
Accolade, Finborough
Water, Tricycle
Antonioni Project, Barbican
Greenland, National
Du Goudron et des Plumes, Barbican
King Lear, Roundhouse
Double Falsehood, Union
Twisted Tales, Lyric Hammersmith
Less Than Kind, Jermyn Street
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