Review: Season’s Greetings Play

Along with the holidays comes the hell of family and even more than that – extended family.  All their craziness and baggage come with them and you are left to survive it at the most stressful chaotic time of year.  Well it is no different for this family in fact it is sort of the worse possible case scenario, Belinda (played by Alecia Corford) is stuck with the Christmas preparations while her husband’s family comes to stay and her sister and her sisters friend Clive, who really should never have come.  The story follows the family in suburban London dealing with each other at this stressful time of year.  With a new arrival every five seconds, heavily pregnant wives, alcoholic sister-in-law’s, and kissing people who are not your husband, the craziness and comedy of this family reaches an all-time high in Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings.

The play was directed by the great actor, now writer and director Ian Ogilvy, who has a great knack for mastering comedic material.  The play features some extraordinarily funny characters who truly represent people we all have in our families, such as Phyllis (Played by the talented Lilly Dennis) who is a raging Alcoholic but avid cook.  She is constantly knocking something over and the next second has some bizarre injury and is curing herself with a bottle of wine.  Or Bernard, Phyllis’s Husband, who is a doctor but a terrible one, so her never has a clue how to do his job.  This entire family is for lack of a better word completely barmy.

The entire production is a great hit and just as the play did smashingly on The West End, we are confident it shall succeed on the LA theater scene as more and more American audiences comes to see British theater her in the US.  The production is truly the whole package, from the lights to the amazing intricate set, along with laugh-out-loud performances from incredible actors, this play is not one to be missed and a great one for the family this holiday season.