What a Relief It Is

Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy, “Season’s Greetings,†is a dour reminder that if things are bad, Christmas makes them worse.

   Not that this play at Theatreworks in New Milford isn’t funny. It is, the way absurd is funny, and outrageous is funny, and surprise is funny, with everyone in the family yearning for love, recognition, even regard. And, not getting any of these. In fact, these characters end up with more of what they don’t want.

   The clan convenes at the Bunker household in a comfy English suburb where Belinda the hostess (Tracy Hurd) has done all the right stuff: a large joint for dinner, lights on the tree, a mountain of wrapped presents including one from her husband, which she was obliged to buy for herself. Trouble begins as Belinda and her sister’s date, Clive (Nicholas Polifrone), a novelist whose first effort is listed as number 17 on the bestseller list, are drawn forcefully, and comically, to each other. Neville (Viv Berger), the husband, is outraged. Rachel, the sister (Alison Bernhardt), is outraged. Everyone else is outraged, too, more or less, and all is resolved, more or less, by gunpowder.

   Oddly, the most hilarious, and telling, moments in “Season’s Greetings†occur during Bernard’s (Philip Cook) puppet show. This kindly and incompetent doctor has mounted it for years, much to the ire and ennui of everyone including the invited offspring. It’s a play in 16 scenes about three pigs: Hubert, Wilfred and Ginger, and their families, and a wolf. Bernard berates Pattie (Mikki Harkin), his assistant who is pregnant with a child she does not want, who keeps handing him the wrong puppet pig, when all three are absolutely indistinguishable in their cute puppet pigginess. Much to everyone’s relief, save Bernard’s, the puppet theater collapses after two scenes. Then the bungling doctor ends up misdiagnosing a patient as dead and leaves, humiliated. Bereft. Just like every one else in “Season’s Greetings.â€

   So, once again, Theatreworks presents a Christmas play that is original, odd, funny, nicely executed and not at all uplifting. For Ayckbourn does not see the season as an opportunity to enjoy one’s blessings but, rather, it’s a time to review the vexations and disappointments of our lives. Something of a relief, I’d say.

Alan Ayckbourn’s “Season’s Greetings,†deftly directed by Glenn Couture, runs at Theatreworks in New Milford through Jan. 2, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.

For tickets and information, call 860-350-6863, or go to www.theatreworks.us

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