Absurd Person Singular September 27, 2012

England's most prolific and most ingenious playwright, Alan Ayckbournt, outdoes himself this time by setting a party in the living room but keeping the drama in the kitchen. Three kitchens, in fact, on three successive Christmas Eves when relationships change, fortunes soar and then dive and the social kaleidoscope gets all shook up. Add an off-stage couple whose jokes are really bad, some of the most ingenious failed suicide attempts ever devised and lots of gin, and you've got a ferociously funny farce with very sharp teeth.