"Season's Greetings"
By Alan Ayckbourn
Date: November 2004
Venue: Annabel's Studio
Dauntsey's Season's Greetings was Ayckbourn with attitude: a pacy, exuberant and hilarious exploration of the tensions, neuroses and obsessions underlying a family gathering at Christmas.
It is the story of Clive and his disastrous Christmas as a guest of Neville and Belinda, and the hapless Rachel. Clive stumbles from crisis to crisis, in the midst of Bernard's hopeless puppet show, Eddie and Pattie's declining marriage, and Phyllis's alcohol-induced confusion. Ultimately Clive is mistakenly shot by a certifiable retired security guard in the frenetic final scene.
The innovative set design, which placed the two halves of the audience either side of the hallway, was designed to make the audience feel as if they were inside Neville and Belinda's house, with the increasingly bizarre events happening all around them.
The same audience who laughed heartily at the expertly-timed sequence in which the predatory Belinda and far more unassuming Clive are discovered together under the Christmas tree, gasped in horror when, in the final scene, Clive was (temporarily) pronounced dead.
Choose an image from the selection on the left
