Christmas Gallery Review – The Site’s Warm-Hearted Feelings of Goodwill to All | Christmas offers

YYesterday was salsa class. Next up is the panto. Other days, it might be anything from language lessons to arts and crafts. Today in this multi-purpose space is the turn of the annual Christmas fair, with its brick stalls, grotto and tree. Sitting on four sides of the elegant ballroom at Chadderton Town Hall, a refuge for Oldham’s stand during renovations, it doesn’t take any leap of imagination to imagine ourselves at a real local fundraiser.

This gives Jim Cartwright’s 2012 play a built-in sense of community. Director Jimmy Fairhurst keeps the house lights on, except for the most poignant speeches, and expects us to clap along to Christmas songs and cheer the young carol singers as if they were our own children. Blurring the gap between fact and fiction, the interlude is less a break in the action than an opportunity to purchase the scented candles and prints by Oldham artists that are part of the collection.

The site-specific hall has its drawbacks. The acoustics are poor and the focus bounces unpredictably throughout the space, sucking the life out of Cartwright’s jokes. Surprisingly for Fairhurst, whose company Not Too Tame specializes in raucous entertainment and live speech, there was little audience interaction.

But there is an anarchic appeal in the playwright’s structural conceit. The show opens with the caretaker (Lee Thoms) sweeping an empty space which, with the arrival of bossy Veronica (Samantha Robinson), enthusiastic Lucy (Kelly Gordon Harrison), MP (Deacon Tyrell) and left-wing clerk Johnny (Paddy Stafford), gradually fills with tables laden with trinkets, toys and teddy bears. Before the night is over, everything will be cleared again. It’s not exactly “Works and Days,” the Belgian silent show that built an entire house on stage, but it has a delightful materiality.

The breezy first half contrasts with the heavier second half, as characters take turns revealing their demons in song-like monologues. The speeches are largely idle, reflections of back story rather than present tense action, but true to it all. He is infused with feelings of good will toward all men and acts charming, serving as a slight but useful seasonal substitute.