Party Season Review – the competition for children’s birthday parties makes parents even more anxious | Theater

Ssome of my worst experiences have come hosting children’s parties: The new Wardrobe Ensemble show should come with a trigger warning. This action-packed drama immerses us in the ephemeral, E-number-addled tantrumscape of a weekend raising five-year-olds to three (three!) birthdays. This is the burden carried by 34-year-old Xander, recently – and reluctantly – returning to Bristol after a short escape to London, forced to reconnect with old friends and painful memories during 48 hours of original musical sculptures, puppet shows and small conversations with people whose children know yours.

For the duration of Party Season’s 95 minutes, we are in sitcom territory. Countrieslots of jokes about competitive parenting, insomnia and domestic jealousy. Directed by Helena Seneca and Jesse Jones, the production brings it all to fluid, sometimes vivid life, as a protective mother (Jesse Meadows) breathes fire, adults become children and children become adults – and the children’s secret entertainer plays our colorful MC. There are too many moments to name, from dodgy Bluetooth-enabled party game music to aspiring parents who “worry if there’s no plan”.

I, too, began to worry about the disjointed nature of Party Season, which takes a while to tell its story, then soon fills itself with themes and plot. The main one concerns Xander’s lack of respect for his dead father, who, although lovingly portrayed by son/father Tom England and father/son James Newton, seems too attached to the string parenting that makes up the bulk of the show. Speaking of which, as much as I enjoy Bronia Housman’s hilarious and cleverly designed neighborhood WhatsApp group with a balloon, it defies credibility that Xander participates in it while simultaneously dealing with the problem of a missing child.

But if the Festival of Seasons hangs together imperfectly, I left admiring the courage of its vision, of children trapped in the bodies of parents, and parents (see Kerry Lovell’s interesting words about the wonders of reproductive animals) shaking at what their bodies, and their lives, have become.