Winter 2026 Production

Season’s Greetings

By Alan Ayckbourn

Merlin Theatre, Frome

19th – 21st November 2026, 7.30pm

Including Matinee Performance Saturday 21st, 2.30pm

Directed by Gerard Crawshaw

Read-through Monday 8 June 7.30pm, Merlin Theatre foyer

Auditions Monday 22 and Thursday 25 June 7.45pm, Canoe Club 

Synopsis

It is Christmas Eve in the home of Neville and Belinda Bunker. Belinda’s sister Rachel is waiting for her friend, novelist Clive, to arrive for a few days. Heavily pregnant Pattie and her husband Eddie are at loggerheads, while in the kitchen Auntie Phyllis’s efforts to prepare the dinner are hampered by her drunken and clumsy antics. Her doctor husband Bernard’s seasonal highlight is his puppet theatre entertainment, and retired security guard Uncle Harvey has a rather unseasonal stash of weapons with him……

Mayhem is quickly unleashed, leading to a romantic tryst, an unforgettable puppet show and maybe even a murder ……

Characters:

  • Bernard (40s-50s). A rather incompetent and feeble-spirited doctor with strong views on non-violence. A somewhat obsessive character. Every year he creates an elaborate puppet show for the children, which he fondly imagines they enjoy (they actually dread it).
  • Phyllis (40s-50s). Bernard’s wife, whom he struggles to support. Highly-strung, possibly alcoholic. 
  • Neville (30s-40s). Phyllis’s brother. Easy-going, always busy fiddling with anything mechanical out in his shed.
  • Belinda (30s-40s). Clearly all the work of organising Christmas falls to her. She endures a stale marriage to Neville, resorting to flapping about the house and constantly dressing the Christmas tree.
  • Eddie (30s). Friend and ex work colleague of Neville’s, but less at ease and less successful than him. A man unsure of where he’s going in life. A rather lazy man who tried to strike out on his own but failed and now pesters his friend Neville for work.
  • Pattie (30s). Eddie’s pregnant wife, largely ignored by him. While wishing she was not having another child, she tries to be generally helpful.
  • Rachel (20s-40s ie could be younger or older than her sister). Belinda’s emotionally fuddled sister. Uptight and constantly fretting about her relationship with Clive.
  • Clive (20s-40s).A writer, in a non-starter of a relationship with Rachel. Attractive but absent-minded. 
  • Harvey (60s-70s). Neville and Phyllis’s cantankerous uncle who boasts about his “thirty years’ experience” as a security officer and bemoans the collapse of society, whilst gorging on TV violence, much to Bernard’s annoyance. Perhaps a military background.

For more information, contact Gerard Crawshaw at gerardcrawshaw@hotmail.com.