This new play Christmas Day by Sam Grabiner is difficult to categorise, largely because it is hard to understand what the author and director James Macdonald are trying to convey. Miriam Buether’s stage is a simple set designed to resemble a large warehouse converted into a communal living area, with unseen bedrooms leading off it. Crossing the stage at high level is a large steel beam from which hangs an industrial gas heater. This heater seems to have a life of its own, switching on and off arbitrarily with a huge clatter. Occasionally, the deafening sound of a Northern Line train rumbles beneath the building. Max Pappenheim is the Sound Designer. Apart from this, the set contains only a simple table, a Christmas tree, and a string of lights.

These are the guidance notes for this play: “male nudity, blood, drug use, dead animals, vomiting, discussion of antisemitism, Islamophobic, anti-Black and antisemitic words, references to the Holocaust, discussion and description of violence and conflict, and references to Gaza, child abuse and bereavement.”  Not your usual Christmas theatre fare but then the Almeida does its Christmas production with a difference!