ALL of my recent reviews of Lichfield Players’ performances have been positive because they were deserved – but this production was on another level.
Set in the living room on Christmas Day it focuses around preparations for lunch. Mom is preparing the meal. Two adult sons are staying: Matthew with his girlfriend; Adam with his wife. What could possibly go wrong?
Bear in mind the writer has added a clever twist – the audience is ‘in on the joke’.
The actors have to follow rules which the audience can see on a big screen. Each character has ‘rules’ which are expanded as the play goes on such as ‘Matthew has to sit to tell a lie’.
So when Matthew, played superbly by new Players member Eoin Edwards, sits down to say how much he adores his girlfriend, well, you get the picture.
The audience knows that Adam must affect an accent to mock. Full marks to new member Steve Male for his brilliant array of accents, from French to Scouse to Brummie and more.
The play was full of excruciating family dynamics. I almost felt guilty for laughing, knowing there were serious issues under the surface. With every fibre of my being I was thinking ‘if this was real I’d have just left and gone home’. Families, eh?
Son Adam and his wife Sheena have full-on blazing rows – following the writer’s rules of course. The timing required to take on a prolonged rage at each other is so difficult. But Steve as Adam and Rebecca Hyland as Sheena really stormed it.
Hannah Britnell, who played Matthew’s girlfriend Carrie, was suitably over the top and laugh-out-loud funny. Stressed mom Edith (Niamh Mahon) desperately tries to keep up appearances as things fall apart.
The plot shifts when her beloved husband Francis, hilariously played by Rob Lewis, arrives home from hospital in a wheelchair. He has suffered a stroke but is returning for Christmas dinner. Prior to his arrival, his wife had constantly praised him. Turns out he wasn’t a good man and never had been. Picture Francis in the wheelchair – Father Jack in TV’s Father Ted crossed with Benny Hill – dribbling, shaking, openly leering at his son’s girlfriend.
Of course everything escalates, culminating in one massive, realistic, hilarious brawl involving everyone except Francis, who looks on from his wheelchair chuckling at the spectacle of turkey flying across the room, girls scrapping and pouring champagne over each other, brothers brawling and the room trashed.
Adam and Sheena’s teenage daughter Emma (played by new member Holly Rice) puts in an appearance at the end, surveys the mayhem and hilariously asks just what’s going on.
Directed by Sarah Stanley this production was a triumph. Congratulations to all on and off stage.