Theatre Three opened the funniest play in all of 2007 with their production of Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings downstairs in Theater Too.
Under the able and clever direction of Kerry Cole, with wonderfully imaginative set design by Jac Alder and David Walsh, and a top-notch cast, it would be hard to go wrong. Season's Greetings is one of Ayckbourn's most outrageously funny plays. First produced at Ayckbourn's Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round in Scarborough in 1980, it is ideally suited to the Theater Too venue.
We spend a frenetic Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day with Neville (Greg Forshay) and Belinda Bunker (Emily Gray) and their extended family, each one nuttier than the other.
As the show opens, Neville's uncle, Harvey Bunker (Cliff Stephens), a gun-loving ex-military man, gleefully watches an old film on TV and comments on the action. Neville's sister, Phyllis (Leslie Turner) is out in the kitchen preparing the holiday meal while liberally sampling the cooking wine. Her husband, Bernard (Stan Graner), busily prepares for the puppet show he puts on each Boxing Day to the dismay of one and all.
Also on hand is Neville's ex-business associate, Eddie (Steven Levall) and his ever-pregnant wife, Pattie (Julie Painter). To say they are not the ideally matched couple would be a gross understatement.
Into this mix, toss Belinda's harried, disheveled sister, Rachel (Sara Lovett) and her writer boyfriend, Clive (David Fluitt), and all the ingredients are present for mayhem on a grand scale.
The tryst on the living-room floor between Belinda and Clive ending Act I is worth the price of admission alone. The opening night audience's resounding laughter was testimony to this fact.
While the entire cast does a splendid job, Emily Gray and Sara Lovett steal the show. Both have British origins; so their accents are genuine. Their energy never falters, and their characterizations are dead-on. Gray does a 180-degree turn from her stand-out performance in T3s earlier season production of Popcorn where she played frowzy gun moll Scout.
