Season's Greetings, Old Gaol Theatre Company, Unicorn Theatre, Abingdon, Dec 3-6

9:00am Wednesday 26th November 2008

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THE Old Gaol Theatre Company at Abingdon is celebrating its 30th birthday this Christmas and will celebrate by staging Alan Ayckbourn’s somewhat jaundiced view of family Christmases, Season’s Greetings.

The playwright said in an interview with the Guardian: “Dinner parties are good, but what better time than Christmas. You’ve got three days together and there’s always bound to be at least a cousin no one can stand.”

And so in the play family and friends come under strain with hilarious consequences as one insists on putting on his Three Little Pigs puppet show and another tries to start an affair under the mistletoe.

Childish behaviour leads to tensions, but the play is in the best traditions of Alan Ayckbourn and is very funny indeed.

Just about everyone in the audience will have experienced something like the action on stage as Christmas, the alleged time of good cheer and jollity, becomes one of the most stressful times of the year.

The play, being staged at Abingdon’s Unicorn Theatre in Checker Walk at 8pm from Wednesday, December 3, to Saturday, December 6, is directed by Eamon Hughes.

In the cast are Kevin Middleton, Jackie Wooster, Lucy Benfield, John Shore, David Spencer, Kate Loven, Matt King, Tracy Lanes and Ian Wooster, with Nicky Davis the producer.