FringeReview UK 2025
Christmas Day
Almeida Theatre
Genre: Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Almeida Theatre, Islington
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
In a fairy-lit dark, a man swears at a Christmas tree. It’s part of an alien rite “that looks perverted and gives me the creeps.” Sam Grabiner’s Christmas Day, a play of family bonds, belonging – with shared rituals and wrangles – is directed by James MacDonald till January 8.
An absorbing drama, taking risks and never losing its balance. For the most part superbly-crafted, with memorable characters, sparking with urgency and sparkling dialogue throughout. The most exciting new play in London.
Review
In a fairy-lit dark, a man swears at a Christmas tree. It’s part of an alien rite “that looks perverted and gives me the creeps.” Sam Grabiner’s Christmas Day, a play of family bonds, belonging – with shared rituals and wrangles – is directed by James MacDonald till January 8.
When there’s light, Miriam Buether’s cavernous set frames a “guardianship”. These unoccupied buildings – here, an office – are often spectral places. Mostly young people pay cheap rents to halt decay and intrusion before renovation. Being Christmas, just five of twelve residents are here, including the man’s son and daughter. It’s dominated by a heater spluttering grungy short-circuits that starts a mini climate-crisis: Max Pappenheim’s yammering but eerie train shrieks also split the day open. Lit by Jon Clark, it’s like something left over from The Outer Limits.
Everyone’s jumpy, giving each other electric shocks when they appear. The domino-effect of Elliot (Nigel Lindsay) startled by son Noah (Samuel Blenkin), who’s freaked by his girlfriend Maud (Callie Cooke), where finally sister Tamara (Belo Powley) startles Elliot too, sets up just how uncomfortable the family are. And that’s just people they know. Assumptions are made about Maud, and when he arrives, Tamara’s ex, Alpha boy Jack: now called Aaron (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd). Which has Elliot speculate about pronouns too.
Jewish identities are broached, even broken open: from customs to spiritual roadmaps for the perplexed. In a explosively-triggered speech that almost leads to the character’s collapse, Lindsay strips bare Elliot’s avuncular wise-crackings through to blunt Israeli nationalism: “It’s ours now!” Grabiner also navigates Aaron’s overly complacent evocations of an Israel he’s just left and to which he might have more ties than he admits; relating casual friendships with men who drive over skulls. These spark up against Tamara’s beliefs; and Noah’s – whom both Aaron and Tamara confidently accuse of being shallow.
Noah’s close to being framed as an “empty Jew” one of those phrases (about having no inner values), that like many Yiddish words too, are notably avoided to swerve cosy tropes. Though some arguments border the stereotypical, Grabiner clears away decorations. He deploys a spectrum of Jewish identities amongst characters so that anti-Semitism, Gaza and – with the siblings – mysticism, are realised through wrangles and identities. When Tamara lobs in “genocide” though, it’s sworn out in politicians’ names.
Yet Tamara’s assertion of Jewishness as exilic and “experiencing what it is to live through time” rather than spatial (so at odds with territorial imperatives of Elliot and subtler Aaron) both vindicates her identity and condemns national belonging. For Aaron “diaspora…. is trauma” and there‘s a “glorious option” after claiming he doesn’t belong. Even here Grabiner pulls rugs for both of them at different points. Both are aroused and match each other. Powley shades Tamara’s leftish righteousness with vulnerability, whilst Fortune-Lloyd’s Aaron is a study in peeling self-betrayal. Noah’s identity though is something at once more liminal and more disturbed. Blenkin’s excellent at shadowing nervous humour with distress.
Ritual crackers pulled, the only one to wear a paper hat is gentle, dipsy-seeming Maud. Cooke’s distrait interjections on weird films or the king’s speech show a family outsider: clueless, even dispossessed. Herself pushed aside as a Christmas tree bauble, she can only speak truth and act with authority when alone with Noah. Indeed both these damaged people find a connection that power-couple Tamara and Aaron only realise through raw sex and arguments that fuel it. And Aaron’s armour is there for several reasons.
Noah’s final action, a kind of ritual, is less convincing than the response it garners from Maud who finally comes into her own. Wren (a drugged-out lost boy), Sphinx (a seraphic Buddhist type) and dealer Felix all played by Jamie Ankrah with a seraphic distraction, seem like living bunting strung out across the haunted house. It’s not just this family who feel deracinated. Grabiner though lets these strands fall as gestures; lets arguments fade as characters crash exhausted in a playing-time that seems, like Annie Baker or Richard Nelson, real-time: with jump-cuts. Another character disappeared in previews.
The announcement you expect someone to make happens, but wholly elsewhere. The last part of the play gathers in hurtling reveals, knotting loose ends at a frantic rate. That’s more plot and character-trussing than always thematically satisfying though. Like life you hanker for an act two. That’s the power of Grabiner’s work, for the most part superbly-crafted, with memorable characters, sparking with urgency and sparkling dialogue throughout. The comedy’s prickly but the intensity more than scratches. This is an absorbing drama, taking risks and never losing its balance. Playing at 110 minutes straight through it’s the most exciting new play in London.
Costume Designer Evie Gurney, Movement and Intimacy Director Lucy Hind, Casting Director Amy Ball CDG, Costume Supervisor Sabia Smith, Props Supervisor Mary Halliday, Voice Coach Emma Woodvine, Assistant Director Sophia Golan.
