Season's Greetings: The Family Dynamic

All families have their own unique eccentricities, and holiday gatherings are prime occasions for individual mannerisms to clash and the chemistry of relationships to come to the foreground. Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings provides a snapshot into the life of the Bunker family over the Christmas season, and illuminates the pleasures and challenges of family interaction.

While the play lacks a dramatic contour and definitive climax and release, such a structure compliments the realism of the story and the true nature of family life and does not prevent one from identifying with the characters. Ayckbourn's script is full of witty dialogues that keep the audience engaged throughout, and he impeccably hits the nail on the head in conveying the inevitable twists and turns of a large family event. The character of Clive, a guest of the family who is enthusiastically welcomed by some and despised by others, adds yet more authenticity to the story, and helps steer it in new and humorous directions. Curiously, while children are referred to many times throughout, they never appear on stage, perhaps suggesting that while Ayckbourn wants us to have the children in the back of our minds, his focus is more about what goes on behind-the-scenes after the children have gone to bed.

The set is a two-story house with an attic for Clive, and it's strong naturalism is very effective. The lighting is also integral to bringing the story to life, flooding brightly through the windows on a sunny Christmas morning and dying down as the hours pass by. A weak point, however, were the scene changes. With the enormous repertoire of Christmas tunes to choose from, the selection here seems curious and simply did not fit. Furthermore, while moving the set pieces around, the actors seemed to completely step out of character, and in doing so removed the audience from the world of the show.

I believe the show was effective in conveying a subject and story we can all relate to, and injecting humor to make it entertaining and engaging.