PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Theatre Royal Bath (to Sat 10 Dec)

THEATRE What's the worst Christmas you could possibly imagine? If you think Sartre was onto something when he wrote that “Hell is other people,” your own Xmas purgatory would surely involve being socially imprisoned in an oh-so-polite, cosy, suburban home with a cast of madmen and women, who all believe you are madder still.

'Season's Greetings' is funny, in Alan Ayckbourn's typical despairing, black-farce way. Ayckbourn says that the play is about children - but not the smaller variety. No, he's interested in those older children “currently going through the 'awkward' age; the 25- to 70-year olds.” And what a motley bunch they are, this group brought together by the most joyous time of the year: jealous, bullying, greedy, lustful, toadying, miserable, self-deluded and hopeless failures.

Into this already uncomfortable assembly is cast an unsuspecting stranger. Clive (Mathew Bose), a writer, acts as our touchstone, by whom we can judge the weaknesses of the others until, of course, he reveals himself to be weaker than everyone. Elsewhere, the best performances come from Karen Ascoe as the bored and sexually frustrated Belinda, and from Jenny Funnell as her emotionally crippled sister Rachel. 'Season's Greetings' includes some wonderful set pieces - useless doctor Bernard (Christopher Timothy) stages a dreadfully misjudged and boring puppet show of 'The Three Little Pigs' that descends into hilarious disaster - and some sparkling dialogue; this is after all a comedy of manners and Ayckbourn (as that nice Alan Yentob was only telling us the other day on TV) is Britain’s greatest living playwright with an extraordinarily accurate ear for how we skirt around painful or awkward reality.

There's much to enjoy about 'Season's Greetings', but there are moments when this production should be funnier and more effective. The final scene especially should be much more dramatically satisfying. The plot weaves a complex web of farcical misunderstandings that eventually concludes not in comedy, but instead in a moment of darkly absurd violence. It's supposed to show how genuinely dangerous seemingly harmless old buffers (like Harvey, pictured above, played by Denis Lill) can be, and should be both funny and scary at the same time. This production, though, just doesn't pull that off. (Andy Batten-Foster)

Copyright Andy Batten-Foster 2011