Amid a theatre season packed with cosy and traditional offerings, the Almeida's festive programming delivers a startling jolt. Sam Grabiner's new play, 'Christmas Day', lands not with warm sentiment but with the sharp, unsettling impact of an ice-cold snowball. Running until 8 January, this production delves into uncomfortable truths about family, guilt, and contemporary Jewish identity, providing a stark counterpoint to the season's typical cheer.
An Unconventional Family Gathering
The play is set on the 25th of December within a dilapidated guardianship property. A father, portrayed with compelling verbosity by Nigel Lindsay, drops in on his two adult children and their former partners. While a Christmas tree is lit, there is no festive warmth here. Instead, the awkward clan shares Chinese food and navigates a minefield of unresolved tensions and divergent worldviews.
Lindsay's father is a figure of constant, opinionated commentary, launching into a comedic early tirade against the Christmas tree itself, labelling it a "perverted" symbol. This opening effectively marks the family's separation from the Christian-influenced mainstream, establishing them as a unit with its own complex lore and rituals.
Clashing Perspectives on Identity and Belonging
The drama intensifies as the siblings grapple with their heritage in profoundly different ways. Bel Powley gives an intense performance as daughter Tamara, who is haunted by images from Gaza and seeks solidarity with global diasporas. She finds a form of beauty in a centuries-old tradition of exile.
In stark contrast, her ex-boyfriend Aaron, played by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, recounts finding a sense of belonging on an Israeli beach, romanticising tanned bodies on white sand. Meanwhile, Tamara's brother Noah, a diffident Samuel Blenkin, attempts to retreat from these polarities, offering opaque musings on ancient rituals whose specific meanings are lost but whose magic endures.
A Production Rich in Atmosphere but Thematically Elusive
Director James Macdonald cultivates a potent sense of naturalistic danger throughout. Miriam Buether's meticulously detailed set is a character in itself—a crumbling 1960s office that seems to actively resent its inhabitants. A dominant, lethal-looking electric heater periodically erupts, baking the family in a sweaty frenzy, creating an implicit, powerful metaphor for a legacy of persecution and discomfort.
Grabiner's writing is at its most enthralling when exploring Jewish mysticism, inviting the audience to interpret ancient tales. However, the play's structure feels deliberately incomplete. It follows the blueprint of a family drama where secrets emerge, but massive revelations are dropped without full examination, red herrings abound, and it culminates in a symbolic, ritualistic scene that demands deep theological unpacking.
The play is stuffed with provocative ideas and striking images that powerfully evoke the discomfort of being Jewish as the horrors in Gaza unfold. Yet, for all its interesting thinking, 'Christmas Day' ultimately feels like a compelling but unfinished draft, raising profound questions about victimhood and identity narratives that it seems reluctant to fully excavate.
