OLD FIRE STATION, OXFORD

"Why can’t they put their sweets in their ugly little mouths, instead of all over my carpet, I don’t’ know," snaps Belinda (Gloria Deacon). Welcome to Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings, where courtesy of the City of Oxford Theatre Guild, you will be effortlessly and hilariously drawn into a Christmas family gathering from Hell.

There’s Harvey, who provides Don Fathers with a peach of a part. Harvey is grumbling in front of the telly. "I think I saw this film last Christmas". What a surprise.

Bored with that, he decides to organise Bernard (a deliciously twittering performance from Tim Eyres), who’s going to provide a puppet show for the children. This dire show-within-a-show is brilliantly realised before our very eyes, the highspot being when pregnant Pattie (Lucy Melville) accidentally bumps into the miniature Theatre, causing the set to collapse.

Meanwhile ponytailed Neville (Geoff Baker) and ineffectual Eddie (Colin Davidson) take refuge in the garden shed. Enter Racheal nervously wringing her hands. Characters don’t come much more negative than Rachael, here sensitively played by Sally Mitchum. She’s so negative that she just sits hunched in a corner when Belinda launches a head on attack ("I want you now") on Clive (Andrew Marshall). A writer Rachael has invited along. This is perhaps the only scene that isn’t quite convincing: Clive’s reaction to Belinda is too virginal for a man with a divorce behind him. But otherwise, under Janet Bolam’s direction, the Guild makes the dialogue sound very natural, given or take the odd inaudible line.

The play still sounds pretty up-to-date as well, even though it was premiered 20 years ago. You are sometimes brought up short however: "I’ve bought them all a gun for Christmas," announces Harvey triumphantly. After working for a security firm for 35 years (he even wears his uniform on Boxing Day), Harvey pompously proclaims that children must be made aware that it’s a dangerous world out there. Perhaps Ayckbourn wouldn’t write that line now.

And there’s also a scene in which Neville actually manages to mend an electrical fault in a broken toy. Try that with today’s microchips. Last and by no means least, the production zings along, thanks to an extremely efficient stage crew – all wearing Santa hats, a delightful touch.

So a lot of laughs and much relief are on offer at the Old Fire Station this week – relief because your own Christmas gathering can’t possibly be as awful as the one in Season’s Greetings, can it?

GILES WOODFORDE