Keeping Up with the Brewster-Wrights
This play is all about—all about—keeping up with the Joneses. It is obsessed with social status, economic standing and how to succeed in business by really trying. At the beginning of the play, Geoff Jackson and Ronald Brewster-Wright are already established, the former an architect and the latter a banker. They have climbed up the ladder of success and enjoy a social standing allowing them not just to look down upon Sidney, but to mark him as unworthy of joining them. He is crass, clumsy and verging on boorish. But Sidney is a go-getter, the very portrait of a man on the make which is supposed to be what it’s all about, right? American economic Thorstein Veblen coined the idea as “pecuniary emulation” but no matter what one calls it, keeping up the Joneses is essentially the fuel that keeps capitalism going despite its quite obvious inherent need for the many to enjoy less than the few while ensuring they never give up trying.
Gender Inequality
The time is the 1970’s. All three men are the breadwinners; all three women appear to be housewives. Each man has his character flaws and they are all predetermined by patriarchal expectation and convention. Domestic tranquility is threatened in each home to different degree. Jane Hopcroft deals with marital difficulties by developing and obsessive need to compulsively clean the house. Eva Jackson attempts suicide on multiple occasions. Marion is a drunk. The play is a bit of a time capsule; transplanting it untouched into the 21st century seems inconceivable despite the fact that any three homes chosen at random may feature a working husband and stay-at-home wife. It is a domestic tragedy from another era; a different time. The same social tensions still exist, of course, but manifest under different social terms.
Guerrillas in the Suburbs
The story may take place among polite society in the British suburbs, but make no mistake: this is a war story. Sidney Hopcroft at some point has declared war on those living on a rung of the social ladder above him. Those below him like the Potters mean next to nothing while the architect and his friend the banker mean everything. But those two will never be friends like Potter. Of course, Potter would lose his friendship status should his ambition ever drive him to surpass Sid on the ladder. It is guerrilla warfare out there in the British ‘burbs and the weapon of choice is ambition. But a weapon without ammunition is meaningless and the bullets Sidney begins acquiring that fateful night of the first Christmas party is credit, courtesy of a banker who never sees him coming. The play ends on a particularly grisly note more than worthy of a traditional war story; Sidney a mad tyrant gone hysterical with power over his conquered enemies.
Ladies Dancing, Lords Leaping, and Golden Rings
It is not for mere dramatic convenience and symmetry that each individual Act of the play is staged as a scene the night before Christmas. The confused, paradoxical and ambiguous nature of modern Christmas is thematically explored throughout the play. Christmas is a time for love and brotherhood…in between shopping for expected gifts often bought to adhere to completely different agenda. These are the nights before the one day of the year where almost the entire world comes to a near-standstill in university harmony so that everyone can rip at the paper covering their latest addition to an ever-increasing supply of material accumulation that seems to be distinctly at odds with the ideology of the prophet whose birthday is being celebrated. These are materialistic people and none of them can find much in their accumulated stuff that brings genuine happiness. Not even Sidney who only procures something close to the joy of the season by gifting humiliation of others.
