The Assembled Party review – Christmas comes early in a raucous family comedy | stage

forIng Crosby is singing, the goose is resting, and the loud aunt is commenting on everyone’s weight: it’s enough to make you double check your calendar. It may be October, but there’s already a giant Christmas tree in the middle of the Hampstead Playhouse, which James Cottrell’s elegant design transformed into an Upper West Side apartment for a non-religious Jewish family gathering for the holidays.

Christmas may come early every year, but it may take a while for this one to arrive: this is the UK premiere of Richard Greenberg’s Broadway play in 12 years. It’s 1980, and the delightful Julie is hosting “Unmercifully” with her husband Ben, whose college-age son Scottie’s hopes extend to the presidency. Jeff, Scotty’s loyal friend from Harvard, naively navigates his way around both the seemingly endless rooms and the extended clan, which includes a “strange” cousin and a mysterious brother-in-law.

Then there’s Tracey Ann Oberman as Ben’s sister Faye, in a performance so delightful that even facing the top of the stage, the back of her ravishingly coiffed head radiates charisma. “I like what you’re wearing,” she told Julie. “Is she your mother?” Blanche McIntyre’s direction maintains the finely tuned comic dialogue of the first half, even if nothing happens and we wonder, along with the characters, exactly what story we’re in. “I’m just a character in a farce,” says Julie. “We’re in a bowl here!” Ben declares.

In fact, we’re doing the kind of old-fashioned play that Jeff’s mother always loved, with “refreshing dialogue” and impossible charm. It is only when we return after this period – to the same family apartment, 20 years later – that the dramatic narrative reveals its shape, as Greenberg emphasizes familial patterns – such as Faye’s relationship with her daughter and mother – with the cyclical nature of political change.

Good acting allows the turbulent scenario to develop real warmth, and Alexander Marks plays the easy-going Scottie and his nervous, vulnerable younger brother. Sam Marks gently longs for intimacy as Jeff, the young man who silently smooths his friend’s pillow and the confident lawyer who still has a little love for his friend’s mother, while Jennifer Westfield’s Julie provides Act Two moments of heartbreaking tenderness. It’s a Christmas worth waiting for.