Mark Turner
Directed by Guy Slater, this revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Season’s Greetings’ rises from the stage like the ultimate Christmas nightmare. Set over four days, the dark comedy watches a fractured gathering of friends and family struggle through their Christmas festivities with mounting turmoil, climaxing with a gun and a trigger-happy uncle.
Details
Venue: The Leatherhead Theatre, Leatherhead
Price: Adult £20, Concession £18.00
Upcoming Shows & Times:
20th - 24th November, 2.30pm & 7.30pm
Tickets: From £18 www.leatherheadtheatre.com
Our Verdict
Despite being mildly alarmed that this black, cynical comedy of a family Christmas feels eerily familiar, I thoroughly enjoyed Leatherhead’s ‘Season’s Greetings’. Simultaneously comical and poignant, it casts a sharp light on the strained relationships between the Bunkers and their Christmas guests. While at times hilarious, it hangs up questions about love, loyalty, and family, and isn’t exactly a mood lifter.
The play starts on Christmas Eve, where Neville and Belinda are hosting Neville’s weak-bodied sister Phyllis and her husband Bernard, an impotent doctor obsessed with his Christmas puppet show. Also along for this unhappy ride are Eddie, Neville’s ex-colleague and an entrepreneurial failure, his frustrated and heavily pregnant wife Pattie, and Neville’s knife-toting uncle Harvey. Rachel, Belinda’s middle-aged virginal sister, adds to the mix her new boyfriend, a young writer named Clive. Children are present, but never in sight. With the stage set, everything begins quaintly enough with a cheerily decorated Christmas tree, but bitter undertones quickly bubble up.
Belinda and Neville’s love has long since become stale, although Neville, pleased with himself and his shed full of power tools, seems oblivious. Pattie, already dealing with three children, is in a constant battle for Eddie’s attention and admits to Belinda that she doesn’t really want the coming baby. Phyllis exhausts herself making dinner, much to Belinda and Pattie’s disgust, and rests on her imagined laurels while Bernard, forever scuttling to his wife’s frail side, drives everyone mad with preparations for his notorious puppet show. Harvey, a retired security guard convinced that the downfall of civilization is imminent, delights in reruns of violent movies and clashes with Bernard’s pacifist ideals. Rachel, upset by Clive’s evident attraction to Belinda, tumbles into defeated resignation.
Most striking are the hollow and mutely tragic breakdowns in both Belinda and Pattie’s marriages – ironically, Bernard and Phyllis, with all their inefficiency and failings, seem to hold together. And Rachel, in the midst of a wretched bunch, keeps her dignity. The plot springs off the late arrival of Clive, who is immediately grandly held in comparison to Belinda’s emancipated opinion of Neville, who is, again, unwittingly blind to his wife’s emotions.
After a doomed attempt at adultery under the Christmas tree, which Neville is determined to ignore, things rapidly descend into chaos. Clive mopes about the hallway dressed as Santa for a kids party, and Harvey, who feels suddenly menacing towards the end, is convinced there is a thief in the house. After one last dramatic accident, things end much as they began, outlining an unsatisfactory future that is grimly relatable.
