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Reader rating
Dir: Anthea Williams.
Cast: Ralf Little, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Claire Keelan, Michelle Terry
Description: A collection of stories that look at all aspects of dumping your partner, at the happiest time of the year. With Ralf Little and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith. Directed by Anthea Williams.
Trains: Tube: Shepherds Bush 
Phone: 0208743 5050
Website: www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Lonely this Christmas: Ralf Little ponders the agonies of dumping and being dumped
This summer, the Latitude Festival commissioned a piece from the Bush. The frothy compendium of sketches about dumping and being dumped, went down well in both Suffolk and London, in no small part because of the project’s lovably chaotic gang-show feel. Now its peppy young team of writers has substantially reworked it for Christmas, using this festive focus to produce a show that is substantially slicker, wittier and deeper than before.
There’s a mischievous Yuletide spring in the step of Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Claire Keelan, Ralf Little and Michelle Terry, who still look as if they’re having a fine old festival time, especially when there are humorous glitches in the sound system. In Anthea Williams’s infectiously enjoyable production, they bounce through sparky scenes that have all the fizz of a champagne cocktail, laced with sudden, sobering shots of absinthe-strength emotion. Lonely souls, a couple of poignant monologues remind us, struggle particularly at this loved-up, camaraderie-heavy time of year.
There’s a fine spoof of the Brief Encounter school of clipped consonants and stiff upper lips, when a Second World War Christmas spent with friends — “The whole place reeked of kippers and despair” —bristles with homoerotic undertones, not to mention lines nicked from Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Terry brilliantly remoulds the December penchant for audience participation by picking on an unsuspecting punter and accusing him of being her nefarious, long-ago first boyfriend. Little raps niftily about infidelity. Like the song almost said: “I wish you a merry Christmas/ But it’s over, my dear.”
Until 10 January (020 8743 5050, www.bushtheatre.co.uk).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
