Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings
Directed by Robin Herford
Richmond Theatre 10th – 15th October 2011
This was a strangely muted performance of an Ayckbourn classic. I am not too sure if it was the timing, October as opposed to December or if the play is starting to have a few creaky bits. Certainly the cast were trying hard and the superb Denis Lill was magnificent, but the first half seemed to produce very few laughs from the audience. Of course a professional company putting on this play, will mean that many an amateur company will be spitting feathers. Like many of his plays, ‘Season’s Greeting’ always produces a large audience. Alan Ayckbourn has always been able to tap into the zeitgeist of the popular audience. Added to that, this production has a fair proportion of excellent and well-known actors. Christopher Timothy plays Bernard, Glynis Barber plays Belinda, Barbara Drennan plays Pattie, Mark Healy plays Neville, Ricky Groves plays Eddie, Jenny Furnell plays Rachel, Sue Wallace plays Phyllis, Matthew Bose plays Clive and of course Denis Lill plays, quite superbly plays, Harvey. So that cast ought to do well and the play itself is a refreshing light and interesting counterpoint to other seasonal offerings, I am sure as winter closes in on us the audiences will be more receptive.
Denis Lill is quite superlative. His range of characters is huge and he can be quite and muted and very supportive, or he can be as big and brash and imposing as the best of them. Here, this play calls out for the big and brash and Mr Lill provides it in spades. The story is well known, but for the benefit of the not knowing here it is. It is Christmas and the family gathers, a typical dysfunctional family, mums and dads, young, unseen children, nieces, uncles, drunken women attempting to cook and the solitary single woman who has invited an almost a friend, a writer famous for his solitary book as yet mostly unread. There are the obligatory rows, disappointments, hopes being crushed that have to come with a typical Christmas. There is also the traditional puppet show ( I now realise with horror what my grandparents had to suffer with the annual performance of the ‘Hole in the Road’ especially as I seem to remember the words better now than I ever did as a child.) which apart from the puppeteer no one seems to appreciate. And then there is the uncle, Harvey played by Denis Lill, seemingly normal but with an arsenal of weaponry, ready for use. In to this maelstrom, the unattached sister, Rachel, invites an intended beau, the writer Clive. As well as the drunken cook, there are plenty of very funny lines, but it is even funnier when the plot turns to the more serious with the quiet contemplation of suicide, adultery, admissions of failure that the play takes off and is seen at its funniest. Perhaps the audience were just waiting for those moments.
Reviewed by Evan Rule
