The scene is set for a typical family Christmas in the Bunker household. Petty and not-so-petty family squabbles break out, insults are exchanged and Christmas presents are rifled. Passions underneath the Christmas tree are hilariously interrupted, a puppet show (the stuff of legend and terror to both young and old) is rehearsed, tempers are lost and shots are fired.

The children in the house are never seen but this doesn’t exclude the audience from witnessing childish behaviour from the adults as the celebrations progress and disintegrate.

Belinda played by Jules Doe (Nobody’s Perfect) and her do-it-yourself mad husband, Neville, played by Andy Taylor (Art and The Birthday Party) host these frantic Christmas celebrations. Their family guests are the accident prone Phyllis (Kate Brookes of Allo Allo), Bernard, her husband, an incompetent doctor and puppeteer (Paul Tomkies, who played Eddie in the 1992 MLT production of Season’s Greetings) and the TV obsessed fitness fanatic, Uncle Harvey (Godfrey West, lately in Entertaining Mr Sloane). The host’s friends, Eddie and Pattie, are played by Sean Hollands, who makes his debut from the MLT Youth Theatre, and Lucy Parkinson. Lucy returns to MLT from her successful performance in Bold Girls earlier this year, for which she was awarded Best Young Performer by the Kent Drama Association. Rachel, Belinda’s unmarried sister, played by MLT newcomer Jo Collman, invites to the festivities the mysterious Clive, a young shy writer, played by Richard Munir, who returns to MLT after many years absence and was last seen in Suddenly At Home. Clive is innocently engulfed in the chaos and is swept away by the mayhem and confusion of what seemed a perfectly traditional family gathering.

Director Karen Turner joined MLT in 2002. She directed A Chip in the Sugar (one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads) at MLT in 2005, but is best known as one of our most talented performers, appearing in Pygmalion, Top Girls, A Servant of Two Masters, A Chorus of Disapproval, The Merchant of Venice, Oh What a Lovely War, Blithe Spirit, The Weir and Bold Girls.