Season’s Greetings

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

There’s a party at the Bunker’s for family and friends and you’re invited. RSVP soon because 90 percent of the tickets are already sold. Yes, tickets because this party nestles down in The Space Theatre at the Bonfils Complex in DCPA for The Denver Center Theatre Company.

Members of the cast of the Denver Center Theatre Company production of Season’s Greetings. The hilarious antidote to too much holiday cheer by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, directed by Gavin Cameron-Webb, celebrates the season in the Space Theatre thru December 23. Photo by Terry Shapiro

Directed by Gavin Cameron-Webb, the party is Alan Ayckbourn’s seriously funny farcical Season’s Greetings.

What the play lacks in plot development it makes up with highly developed off-the-wall characters. OK, so it’s a dysfunctional family attracting dysfunctional friends, (present company excepted, of course) which definitely makes for unique personalities, creating hysterical situations. With a less than adequate cast, this play has the makings for disaster.

Not this production. This one swings, in more ways than one, with a superlative cast of brilliant actors who understand farce in its highest form, have their characters wrapped in red ribbon and glitter, play every scene with a serious bent, allowing the hilarity speak for itself.

Belinda Bunker (Kathleen McCall) and her husband Neville (Sam Gregory) host the party in their upscale upper middle class home in a London Suburb. McCall wraps the blond effervescent Belinda in a tightly packaged persona of determined enthusiasm to keep the party fun, ordered, and on time. With a smile plastered on her bright face, appearing to be in all places at all times, Belinda’s vulnerabilities of ignored loneliness shimmers underneath the always well-dressed fa�ade. McCall nails Belinda to the wall with her smiling spirited party persona. Her biting tongue spiting out biting words under the veneer of the pasted smile, shows there is a completely different Belinda alive somewhere. McCall walks the inside/outside tightrope with delightful fun.

Successful, proud of his achievement, Neville owns two local electronic stores allowing him to saunter through life in an easy going manner ignoring some issues around him, including his wife. Gregory carries Neville proudly on his shoulders.

Invited to the party are Phyllis, Neville’s happy go lucky alcoholic sister who insists upon cooking the Christmas Eve dinner with one hand and a bottle of spirits in the other. Charlotte Booker takes Phyllis for a wild devil-may-care hysterical romp with frequent miscalculating steps. Her husband, Dr. Bernard Longstaff, played by Paul Hebran throws a protecting web around Phyllis and turns his yearly puppet show into a raging rampage of power and control gone awry. The others grumble about the deadly puppet show, which only feeds traditional determination into his growl “I’ll do them the way I want.”

A love-hate relationship balances between Bernard and Harvey Bunker, (Mike Hartman) a retired security officer overflowing with radical opinions. Hartman has some of the best lines in the entire play coated with the laughable rough and gruff. He loves violent TV shows, anything with a fight. Bernard and Harvey keep up a running verbal bantering sword fight. Without the bantering, both would be lost. They love expressing their discontent toward each other, providing a good many laughs. A habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time gives Harvey opportunity to jump to unwarranted conclusions he eagerly feeds.

A former employee of Neville, Eddie (Douglas Hartman) and his pregnant wife Pattie (Anne Marie Nest) carry on their own verbal sparring. One demanding while the other ignores. Eddie learned a great deal from Neville including the art of putting off his wife’s demands even when she�s screaming at the top of her lungs.

Charlotte Booker wraps herself tightly in the stringently boxed-in Rachel, Belinda’s older closed-off sister. Rachel has taken it upon herself to invite a friend Clive Morris (Greg Keller) into the mix sending Belinda’s ravishing neglected hormones into overdrive and Phyllis’ inhibitions on a suicide drop out of an upstairs window. Clive not only feeds off of the attention but also deliberately feeds into the fray. Keller plays Clive with an attentive guest persona, minding his manners that is until opportunity grabs him and his “lower brain” takes control.

A great deal of yelling takes place with everyone in different rooms as Belinda shouts for Neville, Patti shouts for Eddie, Rachel mopes, Bernard and Harvey needle, and Clive plays each hand as they are dealt to him. It’s a three-ring circus of biting words, put downs, demands of love, disappointment, insecurity, defense, fidgetiness, expectations turned upside down, and the wanting for family to celebrate no matter what anyone does or says. They are all an accident waiting to happen, and happen the accidents do right on schedule.

The play’s time frame runs from Christmas Eve through December 27 with one hilarious episode toppling into another hilarious episode. In many ways the most ridiculous and the most hysterical moment comes at the end of Act I when the extended family are awakened by loud noises catching Belinda and Clive in an uncompromising position. The timing, the character portraits, the reaction is comedic genius.

In spite of the hilarity of the characters, the play goes around in circles looking for a plot that seems to have gotten lost in the wrappings.

Although the stage has been beautifully decorated for the inside of Belinda’s and Neville’s upscale home, the direction has some serious holes for a theatre in the round. There are moments when characters stand in one place too long blocking the view for those sitting directly behind them. The success of theatre in the round demands constant movement so none of the audience feels left out.

Part of the problem is the set design by Hugh Landwebr with pieces blocking the view for some sections.

Beautifully dressed, the set represents looking down on the inside of the Bunker’s house. A very large Christmas tree sits on a lower landing of a grand staircase leading up the bedrooms. However, it is only half a tree. Half of it beautifully decorated while the other half is flat wood. Audience members sitting in section 4 face the flat wood side and the tree blocks the view of actors standing in front of the tree. Most of us sitting in section 3 could see the edge of the tree and most of the action on the stairs although some were blocked.

An arm chair facing between Section 2 and 3 representing a room for the TV blocks the action in the chair for audience members sitting on the other side of the stage. That’s where Harvey sits laughing over his fight oriented TV programs. Anyone sitting behind the chair misses his knee slapping hilarity and contorted expressions.

Those people sitting in section 1and 2 miss the puppet stage, which has some hilarious moments when puppeteer Bernard attempts to try out his annual puppet show of The Three Pigs. They hear the words, they see the antics of the actors, but are blocked from seeing the puppets themselves, which are really marionettes instead of puppets. Power and control overcome Bernard wanting perfection from his assistant, Rachel who swarms with frustrating difficulty differentiating Pig 1 from Pig 2.

Talked into playing Father Christmas for the children who never appear on stage, Clive takes far too long to get ready as far as Harvey is concerned. He greets Clive with the growl “By the time you’re finished, your audience will have grown up and left home.”

By early evening on December 27, the play just comes to an end. Having gone in dysfunctional family circles, it’s time to grab the hat and coat and leave the party.

In spite of the weak plot, and the blocked views caused by direction and set, the actors are magnificent, the situations enormously funny, and the characters rich in exasperating caustic bantering words spelling pretense and harsh reality all at the same time. The enormous laughs are worth the RSVP to this party.