←Recommendations of The Great Tinsel War of 1979

Hilarious from start to finish. Soucy expertly captures the realism and absurdity of holiday fights and family feuds in this delightful 10-minute romp.

Ah, the petty arguments in couplehoods that truly feel like battles! There's is much to relate to in this over the top war documentary about holiday traditions and compromise in new families. Very funny and a perfect piece for a short play festival for the holidays!

For those of us of A Certain Age, simply remembering that tinsel was a Thing - a bizarre, trashy, family conflict-spawning Thing - provides entertainment enough. But Soucy is up to something much sneakier and more ambitious, exploring how the most trivial moments of the past can have unimaginable consequences at both the micro and macro levels. (The reveal of why future academics would study this domestic spat, done as a deliberately anti-climactic aside on the last page, is horrifying in its hilarity.) I'd say to make this short play a Yuletide tradition, but those can always backfire...

Yes, yes, yes -- Tinsel wars were definitely a "thing" in the 1970s! Christopher Soucy captures the absurdity of traditions where we dig our toes in deep and shows us how we can laugh at ourselves instead. Well done.

The tension and the laughs escalate at a frantic pace in this clever look at holiday traditions. The narration that places the inter-family squabble into historical context is simply brilliant. So much to love about this play, including a character who could pass for George Santos, Jr. Obviously a great addition to any holiday themed festival, but truly a comedy that should be welcome year-round.

The Great Tinsel War of 1979 has got a great pace, and each time the door opens, another zany character arrives. The Academic, relating each strategic movement in the war, sets the stage for a hilarious story.

Disclosure: I was raised by a father who put on the tinsel 1 strand at a time. Really, Lorne and Molly - don’t even go there. Soucy opens up the Christmas traditions that are sacred. Choose your fights or you might wind up with children that create a thermo-nuclear war. Tinsel escalates. Soucy escalates. To throw tinsel or to place tinsel? Soucy asks this in earnest. Think carefully before you answer. Don’t endanger your holly jolly Christmas. (I now await the Fruitcake Wars play.)

Second only to how to hang a toilet paper roll, how to hang tinsel on a Christmas tree has to be one of the great sources of friction between couples. Here Christopher Soucy sends such a dispute over the edge and over the top, involving not only the couple but their families. Then he packages it like a retrospective on the History Channel. It's hilarious. It would be the perfect spark for a holiday short play festival.

War changes people. It's why Alli and I work at hotels during Christmas. There's less space to decorate a large tree, which means there's less opportunity to suddenly instigate a multi-generational war of dastardly, cutting barbs that irrevocably destroy the soul. Fights are quiet in the annals of history. But wars? They are studied. In academia. Forever. There was a time that I did not e'en know of tinsel or what it was. How I long for that time! But the innocent cannot stay so forever, and sides must be chosen. This is a hilarious play.

Well, that escalated quickly! A disagreement over proper tree-decorating techniques escalates wildly out of control, stretching forward and backward through time and across two families, exposing secrets and hilariously catastrophic consequences -- all under the watchful eye and droll tongue of an omniscient narrator. A late, almost-casual reveal punched a gut-laugh out of me. A hilarious and grim holiday gem.