‘Too much, this is too much,” declares Edith, the mother of grownup sons, Matthew and Adam, who have gathered with their partners for Christmas to welcome home the family patriarch, Francis, who has been in hospital. The audience may think the same of Sam Holcroft’s knowing comedy as it layers on family dysfunction like icing on a Christmas cake. The evening begins in Ayckbourn mode, turns into something more vicious and becomes an all-out farce where the food flies and it is not only the turkey that gets stuffed.
Holcroft’s play, which was first seen at the National in 2015 and is getting its regional premiere under the guiding hand of director Simon Godwin, is an odd beast. It revels in the conventions of traditional domestic comedy, but then ups the ante ingeniously by playfully showing us the rules by which each of the characters live and their destructive patterns of behaviour.
So, when Matthew tells a lie, he must sit down. When Adam wants to mock (which he does, all the time), he must affect a silly accent. Edith must clean to stay calm and Matthew’s girlfriend, Carrie, must make a spectacle of herself until she gets a laugh.
The device certainly ensures some laughs, but it becomes wearying and the rules the writer has imposed upon herself sometimes look in danger of sinking the play. The characters and their quirks too often seem set up to deliver comedy, rather than reveal any truths. They are stock characters: the emotionally blackmailing matriarch; the sons who could not live up to their bullying father’s expectations; the girlfriend who wants a wedding ring; the wife who despises her husband and has become obsessed with her teenage daughter’s health. It is hard to like them and even harder to feel for them or see them as mirroring our own neurotic behaviours.
There are implausibilities, too – trains running on Christmas Day? – and Holcroft withholds information to suit herself, rather than the audience. But there are a few comic moments that are such crackers that it doesn’t feel too odd to be celebrating Christmas in September.
- At Royal & Derngate, Northampton, until 30 September. Box office: 01604 624 811. Then touring until 18 November.
