Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings

It’s Christmas Eve and the host is tinkering in the toolshed, his wife’s feeling neglected, his neurotic sister’s wrecking the food, and their ex-security guard uncle (a knife strapped to his calf) is glued to the same TV programme he watched last year – and the year before that.

Even without the addition of an incompetent brother-in-law rehearsing an interminable puppet show (and a miserable couple expecting yet another baby) it’s a recipe for disaster, stirred up by too much booze and the arrival of a novelist with whom his spinster sister-in-law has fallen in unreciprocated love.



Alan Ayckbourn’s 1980 comedy is as bleak as it is funny, and a strong cast (including Mark Gatiss, David Troughton and Catherine Tate) makes you glad the festive season is over for another year.

4/5

Lyttelton at the National Theatre
South Bank
SE1 9PX
Waterloo tube
020 7452 3000
nationaltheatre.org.uk
Booking until March 13
£10 – £44.00



- Louise Kingsley