Bitter sweets

Happy Christmas, New End
The Seagull; King Lear, New London

A blast of seasonal cheer at the New End Theatre. Paul Birtill’s bitter and hilarious family satire, Happy Christmas, starts like a subversive salute to The Homecoming. Upwardly mobile John introduces his posh fiancée Mary to his dysfunctional all-male family. The script is crammed with offbeat gags. ‘Strange taxi-driver,’ giggles Mary as she enters; ‘do you really think his granddad was on the Titanic?’ She refuses to be cowed by John’s ghastly brothers. Kenny is a workshy alcoholic — ‘There’s an art to being on the dole’ — who immediately bums a tenner off her and later rifles through her purse. Schizophrenic Mark insists on boring her with his mad, painful poetry about the pain of being mad. And her prospective father-in-law, Jack, demands £5 for a Christmas dinner of peas boiled in tomato sauce. Finely portrayed by Colin Hill, Jack develops into the most complex character, a hypocritical Jesus-freak who worships at the local church in order to stalk teenage girls. This gruesome mixture of misogyny and thwarted lust has the unmistakable tang of lived experience and Birtill’s script elevates it into bizarre and scintillating comedy. A treat.

The RSC has spent a year touring the world with Lear and The Seagull and the two plays arrive in London for a final lap of honour. The sets by Christopher Oram cleverly disguise their IKEA-like collapsibility. In The Seagull, the exteriors are suggested by five silver birches, and the interiors by a table, a dresser and a desk. Thrifty and highly portable. The outstanding performance is William Gaunt’s Sorin. In a smallish role he transforms the self-pitying grouch into a sad, twinkly, funny and wonderfully affecting old codger.