Any parent or carer knows the joy and excitement of a child’s birthday party – apart from those parties that are hotbeds of passive aggression, angst and bewilderment at other people’s parenting choices. Party Season is a witty and engaging exploration of the latter. It gives us a weekend in the life of Xander, a father to a five-year-old who has so far (somehow!) avoided all children’s birthday parties, the school run and most importantly the parents’ WhatsApp chat.
The play packs a lot into its 90 minutes. It is well-constructed as a comedy and there’s a good number of real laugh-out-loud moments, right from the audience participation and dad-humour of the very first scene. There are also scenes of sadness and poignancy, though, which cut through the comedy to give bittersweet moments. Some of these can be a little sudden; mood changes which veer from extreme to extreme. This made some of the story arcs hard to piece together, but nonetheless the themes of fatherhood, shame, parental anxiety, identity and community add welcome complexity to a simple premise. The torment Xander suffers over the two days really had me rooting for him, if not a little anxious over quite how much party prep he hadn’t done.
The stage is vibrantly balloon-themed, with five doorways used effectively to show the manic buzz of the pre-party preparations, the overwhelming chaos of the party itself, and later to hold Xander captive as he tries to escape a difficult conversation. These doorways also provide the backdrop for a very entertaining WhatsApp messaging scene that could have been taken from a documentary of my life, using coloured lights and sounds as the cast skilfully imitate emoji to convey the entire spectrum of messages on a typical parents’ WhatsApp chat.
Party Season’s seven-person cast is skilled at playing parents and children alike, with impressively seamless transitions between the two, and the characterisation is excellent. Some characters are instantly recognisable (happily not from direct experience), from catatonically sleep-deprived second-time mum Simone to the hyper-competitive Celia who sees herself as the kingpin of the parent group. Excellently-observed moments come thick and fast, from the toxic gentle parenting (“gentle toes please Aongus!”) to the regency era version of the Saha Boys’ Soda Pop at the unbearably aspirational parents’ party. Ultimately Xander’s transformation as his weekend takes turn after horrible turn is a joy to watch, while cringeing at a particularly awful indiscretion and being forever grateful that my days at young children’s parties are in the past.
Pippa for Canal St Media