There is an enduring sense of solidity and assurance about this play, undeniable maturity in the wry humour of the playwright’s vision and confidence in his observation of the pakeha middle class world at the time of writing. Fourteen years after it first played at The Court, his chronicle of the Bishop family still has great audience appeal.

Undeniably, many of the ideas and issues raised carry less dramatic interest than they held a decade ago. Societal expectations of marriage, parenting, gender, race, politics – the list goes on. What has not changed, and apparently never will, is our clumsy inability to say what we mean when it needs to be said. Even more potent a theme is the conflict we invite by expecting others to live life on our terms. The family provides an ideal microcosm to probe all this, and in dialogue as effortless and familiar as we hear every day.

The comfortable perspective offered by social history is itself growing in popularity and for some the play’s trail across forty years will be an attraction. No fewer than eight Christmas days are visited, over times ranging from morning to night. Potential conflicts are sketched with subtlety before they develop into full blown barneys. Outside the action, the audience peers in at the same confining, defining dining room, seeing all sides of the long little wars as they come and go.

An unfortunate side effect of this chronological approach is that it takes time to recognise patterns of behaviour and response, so that the period before the interval feels as slow as those Christmas afternoons when we do not want to think or feel or pay attention. Events of the second half soon reinvigorate dramatic tensions however and the play ends strongly.

Eilish Moran’s common-sense approach as director of this production is a long leap from the sparkle of Guys and Dolls ,where we last saw her triumph as Miss Adelaide. Her cast are dinkum Kiwis, entirely recognisable as products of their various times. All seven roles are challenging and from memory, all have sizeable chunks of exposition to handle, in itself demanding in a play with more talk than significant action. There is a limit to what can be conveyed through setting and clearing a festive table. Their presence over the years renders them ‘faithful’, though ‘joyful’ and ‘triumphant’ would mostly have to be read as another example of  Lord’s prevailing sharp and darkish humour.

Stand-out performances come from those left to have a final say. Redoubtable neighbour Alice Warner (Judie Douglass) and George Bishop (Stewart Ross) have marked the opposite ends of the play’s political and social spectrum all their lives and each has established, from the beginning of the play, a wonderfully colourful and contentious character. As their circumstances change, they manage, in their eighties, to achieve a positive friendship.  

Their wisdom is not yet within the reach of George’s daughter, Rose, perceptively played by Sandra Rasmussen. George, she says in the last moments of the play, is still talking nonsense. With the serenity – or could it be resignation – of his ninety odd years, he is content to reply, "So it might seem." Triumph and joy are writ small.

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