The ‘awkward’ brand of humour is one well known to audiences. Popularised in modern times by the Ricky Gervais School of comedy, it employs cringe, painful pauses, and a whiff of nastiness to sell its humour. Thomas Sainsbury has long done his own successful spin on the genre, and is a great match working for the first time with the Outfit Theatre Company with Director Benjamin Henson for their annual Christmas show. The title is a very good clue as to whether you’ll enjoy this play. Believe me; this family Christmas is awkward indeed.

We open on a suspiciously happy couple Polly (Jacqui Nauman) and Percy (Andrew Ford): he’s reading the newspaper, she’s creaming a Pavlova, and both send adoring smiles across the John Parker designed room. It’s the one moment of relative calm the play affords us; then (this reviewer attempting to remain sensitive, which the play does not do), Polly awkwardly walks, feet inward, across the room and we realise she is a few kiwifruit short of a pav (Nauman making a late play for the ‘The GAIL COWAN MANAGEMENT Award for Best Actress/Actor Playing a Character with a Disability/Medical Condition of the Year’ Hackman Theatre Award). Percy launches into a foul rant. Whenever anyone else is around, Percy pretends to be mentally impaired for his own perverse reasons, Ford channeling his Tweedle Dum character from Alice earlier this year. Those are only the first two characters we meet. [More] 

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If you’ve been dreading Christmas with your family this show will reassure you that at least your holiday season is unlikely to be marred by aliens, murder, sexual pottery and hankies in the food.

The play is set in the home of Polly, a pretty young woman who has something terribly wrong with her. Played by the engaging Jacqui Nauman, Polly is the heart and soul of the play and the only likeable member of her family. Polly attempts to please her siblings, her estranged parents and their various hangers-on in her quest to host the perfect Christmas.

At first the kaleidoscope of wacky characters – which include a Celtic Tongan, a troubled next-door neighbour, a beautiful woman with super-human abilities and creepy Aryan twins – is overwhelming but bit by bit each character’s story is told.

Unfortunately some of the more interesting stories are glossed over in favour of kinky sex triangles and gratuitous food fights.

That might sound intriguing but further exploration into the idea of the lonely father who’s recreated the family home, or into the complex relationship between two stoners (played brilliantly by Brad Johnson and Cole Jenkins) would have reaped emotional rewards.

As usual Sainsbury is bursting with ideas and this script is tantalizingly close to becoming a classic. But as it stands, the talented cast and production team have created a jolly good Christmas romp. 

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