''Season's Greetings'' is a 1980 play by

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

Alan Ayckbourn Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2021, more than eighty full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of ...

. It is a black, though often farcical, comedy about four days in the life of a

dysfunctional family A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often child neglect or abuse and sometimes even all of the above on the part of individual parents occur continuously and regularly, leading other members to accommodate suc ...

starting on Christmas Eve, and is set in a typical English suburban house.

Characters

The characters seen on stage are the nine adults present in the house. All the children are off-stage characters, although a few productions have been known to use child actors. The nine adults are: * Bernard, a feeble-spirited doctor with strong views on non-violence. Every year he creates an elaborate puppet show for the children, which he fondly imagines they enjoy (though they actually hate it) * Phyllis, Bernard's lush of a wife, whom Bernard struggles to support * Neville, Phyllis's brother, always busy fiddling with anything mechanical out in his shed * Belinda, who endures a stale marriage to Neville, resorting to flapping about the house and constantly dressing the Christmas tree * Eddie, a lacklustre and lazy man who tried to strike out on his own but failed and pesters his friend Neville for work * Pattie, Eddie's pregnant wife, largely ignored, who can only nag at him and wish she were not having another child * Rachel, Belinda's emotionally fuddled sister * Clive, a writer, in a non-starter of a relationship with Rachel * Harvey, Neville and Phyllis's uncle, a cantankerous man who boasts about "thirty years' experience" as a security officer and bemoans the collapse of society while himself gorging on TV violence, much to Bernard's annoyance

Plot

The play begins on Christmas Eve. Harvey and Bernard argue over the violence shown in a film on TV while Neville and Eddie obsess over building remote-controlled Christmas tree lights; all the men largely ignoring their wives. Rachel becomes anxious over the late arrival of Clive, eventually leaving the house to look for him. When Clive arrives he meets Belinda and they swiftly develop a mutual attraction. Throughout Christmas Day Clive grows closer to Belinda and more distant from Rachel. Finally around midnight, after a drunken game of snakes and ladders when Belinda and Clive believe everyone has gone to bed, they attempt to have sex in the sitting room but are thwarted when they set off a toy drumming bear, which rouses everyone else. On Boxing Day, Bernard goes through the rehearsal of a dreadful puppet production of ''

The Three Little Pigs "The Three Little Pigs" is a fable about three pigs who build three houses of different materials. A Big Bad Wolf blows down the first two pigs' houses which made of straw and sticks respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house t ...

''. But after only two of the sixteen scenes, Harvey grabs the puppets and begins a fight, enraging Bernard. On the 27th, Clive tries to sneak off first thing in the morning but Harvey shoots him, mistaking him for a looter. Bernard incompetently pronounces him dead. When Clive recovers, he is taken to hospital, leaving Neville and Belinda together, Neville having chosen to ignore what happened between her and Clive.

Productions

Premières

''Season's Greetings'' was premièred on 25 September 1980 at the

Stephen Joseph Theatre The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain. In 1955, Joseph established a tiny theatre in the round on the f ...

(then at the Westwood site), with the following cast:Production details on Ayckbourn website
/ref> *Harvey - Robin Herford *Bernard - Ronald Herdman *Belinda -

Tessa Peake-Jones Tessa Peake-Jones (born 9 May 1957) is an English actress having appeared in ''The Danedyke Mystery'' (1979), ''Pride and Prejudice'' (1980), ''When We Are Married'' (1987), ''Up the Garden Path'' (1990–1993), ''So Haunt Me'' (1992–1994), ' ...

*Pattie - Lavinia Bertram *Neville -

Michael Simkins Michael may refer to: People * Michael (given name), a given name * Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael Given name "Michael" * Michael (archangel), ''first'' of God's archangels in the Jewish, Christian and ...

*Eddie - Jeffrey Robert *Rachel -

Marcia Warren Marcia Warren (born 26 November 1942) is an English stage, film and television actress. On stage, she appeared in '' Blithe Spirit'' as Madame Arcati and '' The Sea'' (2008) at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. She is currently appearing in Netflix' ...

*Phyllis - Susan Uebel *Clive - Robin Bowerman The creative team was: *Director -

*Design - Edward Lipscomb *Lighting - Francis Lynch *Music - Paul Todd The play was shown again the following year, with the play partially recast. The year after that, the play received its

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première and the

Greenwich Theatre Greenwich Theatre is a local theatre located in Croom's Hill close to the centre of Greenwich in south-east London. Theatre first came to Greenwich at the beginning of the 19th century during the famous Eastertide Greenwich Fair at which the Ric ...

on 28 January 1982, before transferring to the West End at the

Apollo Theatre The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, in central London.

on 29 March 1982. It ran until 18 September 1982. ''Season's Greetings'' was staged

off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

at the Joyce Theatre in the summer of 1985. ''

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'' theater critic

Frank Rich Frank Hart Rich Jr. (born 1949) is an American essayist and liberal op-ed columnist, who held various positions within ''The New York Times'' from 1980 to 2011. He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO. Rich is current ...

gave this production by

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

Alley Theatre The Alley Theatre is a Tony Award-winning theatre company in Houston, Texas. It is the oldest professional theatre company in Texas and the third oldest resident theatre in the United States. Alley Theatre productions have played on Broadway at L ...

a generally favorable review: "Despite the amateurish lapses of the Alley ''Season's Greetings'' — primitive production design, wavering accents, some routine acting — it is more spirited than the play's 1982 West End staging, and, at its best, both funny and disturbing."

Revivals

''Season's Greetings'' has had numerous revivals in professional theatre, including a 2004 touring revival directed by Ayckbourn himself for the

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre is a theatre located in Guildford, Surrey, England. Named after the actress Yvonne Arnaud, it presents a series of locally produced and national touring productions, including opera, ballet and pantomime. The theatre h ...

. A London revival was staged at the

Royal National Theatre The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. I ...

in December 2010 and ran until March 2011.

Adaptations

In 1986 the

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...