Christmas Day - Almeida ★★★★★

How does a Jewish family navigate their way through issues of Jewish identity and heritage within the context of current troubles in Gaza whilst seated around a festively decorated table, consuming a delivered Chinese meal on Christmas Day? Spoiler alert: they don’t!

This is not a conundrum question to be found in any of the Christmas crackers strewn around the table and therein lies a wonderfully crafted presentation of these complexities where comedy is skilfully woven through a raw and explicitly written drama by Sam Grabiner and directed by James Macdonald.

Boorish Elliot (Nigel Lindsay), middle-aged, British, forceful in his opinions and with a tendency to catastrophise, visits his adult children on Christmas Day. Ironically the only person sporting a Christmas jumper, he is immediately outraged by a huge Christmas tree dominating the corner of the room: “Your Grandfather would cut off your c**k!” he tells his son Noah (Samuel Blenkin). This sets the tone of the generational conflicts in religious philosophy, tradition and culture. All the young adults around the table are horrified by Elliott’s use of racist terms for global majority people whilst he speaks of the horrors of pogroms and the Holocaust. However, to his children, Elliot in his Christmas jumper looks like Rolf Harris, a “nonce”.

The themes and topics are numerous, multilayered and wrapped in the characters telling narratives of their history or current experiences. There is a strong sense of the oral tradition as a core part of Jewish identity. Tamara (Bel Powley) gives an articulate account of Judaism moving from a religion of space to a religion of time, which began when the ancient sacred temple was destroyed by the Romans and the repeated moving on of Jewish people due to the hostilities of Christians, and how the Jewish diaspora has become what it is.

It is an intense existential feast exploring cosmology, ancestry, sin, salvation, the intersectionality between Judaism and Christianity, the conviction of land ownership, anti-Semitism and what it means to be Jewish today. There are many comic references to recognisable and maybe stereotypical Jewish culture (Tottenham, Woody Allen, psychoanalysis) which an entire audience would recognise.

The set is a stark, municipal warehouse room which serves as a communal living space for Tamara, Noah, his non-Jewish and whimsical girlfriend, Maud (Callie Cooke), and nine other cohabitants. We get to meet Wren (Jamie Ankrah), whose slothful walk, strange speech and evident drug-induced mental state bring discomfort to the group and make him the outsider: unwanted and uninvited to the gathering who are discussing the meaning of family and unity. The erratic, clanky and fierce furnace not only overheats the room but also serves to intensify the discomfort, conflicts and overflowing emotions between the characters.

Tamara repeatedly asks, “Have you seen the news?” Although we never get to know the news, we can make safe assumptions it relates to current conflicts related to the Middle East. Like her father, she is dominant and controlling, and she lacks patience. The apparently unexpected arrival of her ex-lover Aaron (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) – formerly known as Jack, from Israel, where he has now relocated, unsettles her and reignites her feelings. It becomes clear that all other family members (including Maud) were aware of his imminent visit and know far more about his current situation than she does…

Noah provides the emotional sensitivity: ever aware of the privilege of being able to conveniently hide his Jewish heritage to be perceived as white, male and English. “We are white. We are the bad guys now.” Denial comes at a cost, and we see the price paid in a brutally raw ending. There is renewal, but this time it is creating new life by choice rather than for survival.

Stellar performances from all in a complex topic about faith and the existence of God in 2025. Dominant characters exist, but no actor is overshadowed. This is a wonderful tour de force in ensemble performing.

It is a beautifully crafted play heavily steeped in historical and cultural content. Christmas Day asks everything and answers very little, yet leaves you wanting to know so much more.