A REAL WILDER CHILD

Aideen Walton on bringing Thorton Wilder’s 1931 classic The Long Christmas Dinner to The Whale stage.

I am really excited to be working on Greystones Players production of The Long Christmas Dinner by Thornton Wilder, especially as I had looked at producing it back in 2021 but the dreaded Covid put a stop to our plans and we had to abandon it.

Thornton Wilder’s plays (and novels) have always interested me. He is probably best known for his Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and popular and well-loved play, Our Town. I love his courage as a dramatic experimenter where he integrates different theatrical forms – farce, comedy, tragedy and melodrama – and explores innovative techniques; the results are always a dynamic and challenging theatrical experience. His one-act plays distill an extraordinary breadth of themes and The Long Christmas Dinner, which he described as one of his ‘cosmic’ plays, is no
exception. His plays continued success, however, is that he never loses the heart and human element essential to engaging his audience and his plays never fail to move us. His humanity is always evident whether in the darker or more joyous themes.

This iconic one-act play is as relatable to today as it was when it was first produced in 1931, described by one critic as ‘one of the sweetest theatrical meals in the repertory.’ It reallly is a tender and insightful family narrative where we watch four generations of the Bayard family through a distillation of their Christmas dinners over nearly 90 years. We see that while the family’s dynamic and characters change, many things remain the same or are repeated in the cycle of life, and especially (which I suppose those of us of a certain vintage can all relate to) how fast the years fly!

This dramatic device of multiple years passing in one setting was stolen by Orson Welles (by his own account) for Citizen Kane, where Welles showed the breakdown of Kane’s marriage over 16 years at the increasingly chilly breakfast table. However, Welles and Wilder were friends and Wilder was generous enough not to withhold his blessing when Welles called him and confessed.

While the original direction for the play was on the conventional stage, with the actors lined up at a ‘last supper’ type table, I’ve chosen to stage the play ‘in the round’ (true to Wilder’s experimental spirit at the same time as true to his intentions, I hope) and, in the case of the Whale Theatre, using ‘the pit’ as our dining room setting. The audience will surround the scene and, I hope, feel almost immersed, a part of, or ‘a fly on the wall’ through the decades of the Bayards’ lives.

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to the Whale team who have been incredibly supportive (as they unfailingly are) in facilitating us working on this production – we couldn’t have done it without them – and we look forward to welcoming our all our supportive, regular audience members and, I hope, some new ones this very special Christmas dinner!

The Long Christmas Dinner by Thornton Wilder is at The Whale from December 12th to 14th (8pm with Sunday matinée at 4pm) – tickets €18 here: https://whaletheatre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873649861