Yet another play about a dysfunctional family! This one’s got a terrific ensemble cast, crackling dialog, and a glorious melee as the climax to hours of slow-build snark. What more could you ask for in holiday entertainment?
Two brothers and their significant others, parents, and one briefly appearing child assemble for Christmas lunch. Hilarity ensues, as long-simmering resentments and new-relationship misunderstandings are presented for the audience’s delectation. The acting is uniformly excellent, with each portrayal of a family member skating perilously close to the edge before losing it in a knock-down, drag-out food fight catharsis.
The “rules” of the title are literally displayed as a set of projections above the stage for a kind of meta commentary to the action. It adds a little zing to have each character’s coping mechanisms on full display. Younger brother Matthew (Will Conard) “must sit and eat to tell a lie…until he gets a compliment.” And he does eat, stuffing his face ever more frantically as the play progresses.
Mother Deborah (Naomi Jacobson) “must clean and self-medicate…to hold her tongue” until, near the end, every surface in the admirably-detailed set has been scrubbed clean – just in time for all hell to break loose.
That Christmas lunch, and all the nosh leading up to it, could be considered a character itself. Watching the play, I was admiring its verisimilitude to the fabled holiday meal on the table of every red-blooded American family: roast turkey, green bean casserole, potatoes two ways, etc., etc., but was too busy laughing or commiserating to consider the mechanics of producing this food. (This, of course, is the ultimate compliment I, as a food obsessive, can give the production.)
But luckily for me, the program includes an interview with Annamae Durham, Round House’s props supervisor. Her first thought was “how was I going to find 36 turkeys, for the run of a show[?]” But that was only the beginning of the questions. “I’m trying to figure out recipes for green bean casserole and everything else that will taste good. …and how we keep that food temperature-safe.” She goes on to describe how they Macgyvered the turkey to produce the least amount of food waste while still looking realistic. (It fooled me!)
Round House has continued its specialty cocktail program with this production. Rules for Spritzing, Partridge in a Pear Tree, and Holcroft Hot Toddy (a shout-out to the playwright), are among the offerings at the Fourth Wall Bar and Café. And, to complement the food-forward holiday show, Round House has partnered with Interfaith Works Food Pantry to accept shelf-stable food item donations.
Rules for Living plays through January 4, 2026 at Round House Theatre.