The Long Christmas Dinner
★★★★☆
The Peacock theatre €16-€20 abbeytheatre.ie
There is something mildly dispiriting about the notion that we’re destined to turn into our parents. But this revival of Thornton Wilder’s 1931 play The Long Christmas Dinner reminds us that there is a fine line between getting stuck in family ruts and celebrating rituals. Wilder knew where this line lay, and his clever piece of observational theatre feels more like a charming old black-and-white movie than Groundhog Day.
The Hollywood hairstyles help. The stylist Trudy Hayes’s chignons and sweeping victory rolls are pure glamour: the hair of the nursemaid (Fiona Lucia McGarry) is almost a walking artwork. Supported by Sally Withnell’s subtle set design, this 50-minute ensemble production captures the seasonal mood as it depicts 90 years of the births, deaths and marriages of the Bayard family in America.
The play centres on Christmas dinner, that epicentre of unity and disharmony. We first meet Lucia (a splendid performance by Valerie O’Connor, looking as though she has walked off an advert for Babycham) and her new husband, Roderick (Byran Burroughs), both bastions of Wasp privilege. Roderick’s mother (Rachael Dowling) is spending Christmas with them and idle chitchat sets the tone. “Every last twig is wrapped round with ice!” Lucia exclaims. “You almost never see that.” Except they do: every year. During the play we meet three generations of Bayards, their polished masks of gentility slipping over politely proffered slices of white meat. And one by one they, literally, exit stage left.
While the 12-strong cast, including Emmet Byrne, Rachel O’Byrne and Máire Ni Ghráinne, are impressive, this play’s success rests on its direction. It took two directors — the mime supremo Raymond Keane and Sarah Jane Scaife — to get this deceptively simple play just right, and they did. A gently paced reflection on the idea that every present moment comes from the past.
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Mabel’s Magnificent Flying Machine
★★★☆☆
Gate Theatre; gatetheatre.ie; Tickets €15
“Things that look like nothing can hold great potential,” is one of the many wise sayings Mabel (Caitríona Ennis) proffers in Mabel’s Magnificent Flying Machine, written and directed by Louise Lowe. Not every tiny person in the audience sitting on the fun-sized bean bags might understand the word “potential”, but the message is clear — people who feel left out are important. If anyone can get that across it is the turbocharged Mabel, who usually feels excluded herself. “I’m one of the left-behinds,” she confides.
This year’s seasonal offering from the Gate is different. While its Christmas productions are usually aimed at a general audience, this is firmly child-centred, the set looking like a chaotic playroom rather than the accustomed gorgeous holiday spectacle. Described as a pop-up adventure, there is a strong sense that Mabel has just walked straight from the pages of a storybook. Dressed in a bright green jumpsuit, Ennis bravely carries the hour-long show alone.
The premise is that Mabel works for Santa — but her latest invention, a flying machine that would make his sleigh go faster, has crash-landed into the roof of the Gate Theatre. As if it didn’t have enough problems. The play charts Mabel’s sterling attempts to rebuild Santa’s trust while reconstructing her fragile self-confidence.
Using the true story of Lilian Bland, the pioneering Irish aviator, as a frame, Ennis is a powerhouse, and particularly excels when she interacts with the audience, although a few more songs wouldn’t go amiss. While my six-year-old companion was unsure about Mabel’s assertion that Rudolph is actually female (something to do with antlers) the flying machine was a tremendous hit. A less frenetic option than the panto for younger kids.