Season’s Greetings (tour – Worthing, Connaught Theatre)
Alan Ayckbourn is, without doubt, a
master of observational, family-orientated, comedy pieces. His
characters always have something about them to which an audience can
relate and the comic situations, although occasionally straying into
the absurd, are believable and quite frequently loaded with drama and
pathos.
from the page and transform them into a theatrical masterpiece is a
cast of consummate professionals with great comic timing and the
ability to develop their characters to engage with the audience.
Sadly, this is where Ian Dickens’ production falls flat on its
comic face.
It may be something to do with the fact
that this particular tour is so short, but the piece seems dreadfully
under-rehearsed.As the actors fail to engage with each other in the
way that a “family” should, they struggle to deliver the work as
it was intended to be seen. With one or two notable exceptions, the
performances are quite “wooden” and some fantastic comic lines
are delivered so flatly that it takes the audience a while to spot
the comedy, and react to it.
The action takes place during a
disfunctional Christmas gathering at the house of do-it-yourself
addict Neville David Callister and his frustrated wife Belinda
Michelle Morris. Their guests include Neville’s accident-prone
alcoholic sister Phyllis Karen Ford and her hapless doctor husband
Bernard John D. Collins, together with Belinda’s spinster sister
Rachel Claire Fisher who has recently become platonically involved
with young writer Clive Nick Ricketts, who had also accepted the
festive invitation.
The final three guests are family
friends Eddie Peter Amory, his pregnant wife Pattie Nicola Weeks
and Neville’s retired ex-security guard uncle Harvey Richard
Tate.
Once all the guests have been
introduced it is time for all the various comic / tragic
personalities to be developed but, although the first act lasts 80
minutes, it is only Bernard and Harvey who achieve that goal before
the interval.
Act Two is only half the length of its
predecessor and, as a result, there is no time to try and make amends
for the lack of character development, with the only real drama
taking place after Bernard endures a verbal battering from Harvey as
he rehearses his terrifically boring children’s puppet show The
Three Little Pigs. Bernard’s decent into self-pity and
his emotional verbal tirade back at Harvey is, undoubtedly, the
dramatic highlight of the piece.
The final scene between Neville and
Belinda is delivered so flatly that it takes the audience quite some
time to realise that the play is finished and the curtain calls have
begun, with the audience’s appreciation of the performances more
polite than enthusiastic.
