Seasons Greetings

We went to see a Christmas play by Alan Ayckbourn yesterday at the National Theatre in London. It was really funny and is about family Christmases and had lots of lines and jokes around the things which happen traditionally in a normal English family Christmas. It had Mark Gatiss from A League of Gentleman and the comedienne Catherine Tate in. It also had the lady from Spooks - Nicola Walker.

There was one part where one of the characters, a writer had been trying to go to bed but kept getting waylaid by various of the women who all seemed to have taken a shine to him. Everyone else had gone to bed and in the hall he first got into a conversation with his friends Aunt who was drunk and began to unwrap a present she had bought for a child to show him. It was a noisy bear who banged a drum and a cymbal and was quite funny but unfortunately by now it was around 1am in the morning and so woke one of the Uncles who shouted down at them to shut up.

The Aunt then went to bed and the writer was trying to re-wrap the present when his friend walked in and started to talk to him about their relationship. This ended with her crying loudly and unwrapping his present to find and use the hankies in it and of course this then also ended with the Uncle shouting down stairs at them to shut up.

The poor writer then tried to re-wrap his present when Belinda, the sister (Catherine Tate) turned up and began flirting with him and they ended up declaring their love for each other, kissing and trying to find somewhere to make love downstairs. They ran from room to room having various mishaps such as falling over in the lounge and almost tipping the dining table over before deciding on the hall under the Christmas tree. They were fumbling around vigorously when they inadvertently let off the noisy bear present which began banging and chiming. It was SO funny! It's hard to describe but it was hilarious and I was screaming with laughter. They were scrabbling around under the tree trying to find which present was making the noise and trying to turn it off when one of them somehow pressed the switch on the Christmas tree remote control which was amongst the presents and the tree just started playing Christmas carols really loudly.

This was just even funnier as they both went slightly mad and were jumping around trying to turn it all off and look decent. It ended with the whole house waking up and coming downstairs to stare at them whilst they were trying to disguise what they were doing and turn off the noise. They came out with lines such as 'we were too excited to wait until tomorrow to open our presents.' I've never laughed so much at anything in a theatre before - honestly it's a good job that it was just before the interval because I was weeping with laughter and extremely close to just losing it all together. It was brilliant. Laughter is good.