Bright Lights shine in Xmas Factor laughter time

Into the Holliday family's horrific holiday household talented writer/director Trevor Hughes packs more envy, black sheep, back-biting and malice than any family could resolve.

In The Xmas Factor he has penned the ideal vehicle for the talents of Bright Lights Theatre Company.

It is custom-made for the cosy confines of Little Common Methodist Church Hall stage; a complex confection of adroit characterisation, laced with a shot of black humour and rounded-off with a generous festive dollop of belly-laughs.

It is seasonally-appropriate without being pantomime, comedy without clich, fun without filth.

If Wednesday's opening night failed to raise the laughs it deserved in the first half-hour it was because the audience were slower than scriptwriter and cast.

When the two sides of the footlights became synchronised The Xmas Factor began to bubble like a rich Christmas pud on the boil.

By the second half people were rolling in mirth.

Scene-stealer John Bryant is mute-perfect as Selwyn Halfacre, the "toy boy" fellow resident Bob Holliday's appalling mother Ivy imposes on the family when she is ousted from her retirement home for crowning a fellow inmate with a brandy bottle.

Cuttingly callous Ivy is played magnificently by Barbara Welford.

Long-suffering hostess June Holliday is delightfully portrayed by Jo Webster with Neil Trimby as husband Bob and Pete Riggs as his brother Don a superb comedy pairing.

Home-coming daughter Molly (Emma Hollamby) has invited art-student Euan McEwen (Sam Webster) for whom, it is revealed she has been posing nude.

Sub-plots abound. Ivy's man-eating sister Phyllis (Pauline Neeser) quickly has her hooks into the free-loading Selwyn. Bob is hiding his redundancy from June but not helped by Don's loose tongue.

June's mother, Ingrid (Sue Hughes) believes the Christmas spirit should be freely imbibed year-round and her husband Vernon (Dick Coomber) suffers the delusion that party-goers enjoy his conjuring tricks and corny gags.

There are good supporting roles from Luke Webster as the geeky teenage son and Marie Rayner as the bearer of bad tidings from the twilight home.

Crisis follows Christmas crisis for the family who put the "D" in dysfunctional.

The final straw is Sue McNaughton's dramatic entrance as Nikki Voss, Polish love-child of Ivy's late husband, a long-distance lorry driver with a polygamous propensity.

The final performance of The Xmas Factor is tomorrow evening. In some ways it is a tragedy the size of the hall does not allow more people to enjoy Bright Lights' stagecraft. But then the intimacy of the surroundings are part of the very considerable attraction.

Calamity piles on calamity almost until the last Can the hapless Hollidays ever regain home and tranquility?.

Remember, it IS Christmas '“ and the Xmas Factor is certainly a Christmas Cracker of a show.