Actors STAGE Season's Greetings

There’s something almost heroic about St. Albert Theatre Arts Guild of Entertainers (STAGE) kicking off their first full-length production with Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings playing at St. Albert Catholic high from Dec. 2 to 4.

Although he’s been dubbed the Neil Simon of Britain, Ayckbourn’s extremely witty and entertaining plays carry an undercurrent of cynicism and sadness. While his comedies have been huge hits in England, they sometimes don’t travel well across the pond.

Directed by Beth Rogers, this black Christmas comedy looks at how the much-anticipated annual holiday is packed with togetherness, but is empty of nostalgic intimacy.

Ayckbourn is a keen observer of middle-class suburban life and sets the action within the walls of a fairly modest home. Technical director Hans Potter has created a living room/dining room set similar to sitcoms.

It’s the home of the alluring Belinda (Samantha Grant) and Neville (Steve Palmer), a retailer who spends every free moment tinkering with gadgets, much to his wife’s frustration. They’ve been married eight years and the bloom is definitely off the rose as Belinda ponders their life as simply friends.

The couple’s invited guests are Neville’s sister Phyllis (Rita Jensen), a loopy lush who insists on cooking the Christmas lamb everyone hates. She is married to Bernard (Kelly Aisenstat), a pompous, incompetent doctor unable to distinguish whether a person is alive or dead.

Neville has invited a buddy Eddie (Rick Wirth), a lazy, self-centred sod that failed at business, and his very pregnant wife Pattie (Lauren Baril), a nagging woman that receives little help in raising their three children.

Belinda’s sister Rachel (Kayla Manuel) a lonely repressed virgin in her thirties has invited Clive, an emerging novelist as a guest. And finally there’s Uncle Harvey (Bob Locicero), a gun-toting, knife-wielding nut job who thrives on blood sports.

The Christmas baubles and mistletoe set the atmosphere. However, you wonder why the characters socialize together. They suffer from rocky marriages, disastrous dinners, and in-laws they dislike. Mix in copious amounts of booze and sexual hunger, and events spiral out of control in a hilarious scene where Belinda throws herself at Clive and their seduction under the tree goes awry.

In the play’s most poignant scene, Bernard foists his puppet show of the Three Little Pigs on a jeering audience. The destruction of his puppet theatre reveals Bernard’s misery and Aisenstat creates a touching moment when we see his shattered ambitions as both a father and doctor.

Locicero’s Harvey, the antithesis of Christmas, steals almost every scene and Wirth’s Eddie is so juvenile, he’s almost fun to dislike.

Ayckbourn’s world has little soothing compassion, and despite the hearty laughs, Christmas is served with a light chill.

Tickets are available at door or email [email protected].