It is a black, though often farcical, comedy about four days in the life of a dysfunctional family starting on Christmas Eve, and is set in a typical English suburban house.

Harvey and Bernard argue over the violence shown in a film on TV while Neville and Eddie obsess over building remote-controlled Christmas tree lights; all the men largely ignoring their wives.

Finally around midnight, after a drunken game of snakes and ladders when Belinda and Clive believe everyone has gone to bed, they attempt to have sex in the sitting room but are thwarted when they set off a toy drumming bear, which rouses everyone else.

New York Times theater critic Frank Rich gave this production by Houston's Alley Theatre a generally favorable review: "Despite the amateurish lapses of the Alley Season's Greetings — primitive production design, wavering accents, some routine acting — it is more spirited than the play's 1982 West End staging, and, at its best, both funny and disturbing.

It featured Michael Cashman, Barbara Flynn, Nicky Henson, Anna Massey, Geoffrey Palmer, Bridget Turner, Lesley Dunlop and Peter Vaughan.