←Recommendations of The Great Tinsel War of 1979

What kind of monster pitches tinsel onto a tree willy-nilly instead of hanging it strand by strand? I guess I'm not capable of being a neutral observer in the great tinsel war. Thankfully we have an academic narrator who is and who is also a great parody of the pompous talking heads that populate so many documentaries. In addition to skewering holiday traditions, this play offers a fun and funny look at a variety of family dynamics in a most enjoyable ten pages.

War is hell.

Even the little ones. The forgotten ones. The ones even the winners forget to write about. The internecine battles leading to a Carthaginian peace of awkward meals, sidelong glares, and a lifetime of Yuletide bitterness.

Even when both parties are wrong because the only tinsel that really makes sense is the long strands that look like cheap boas, but I digress...

Astride the beast of propaganda press the thighs of truth! Herein, a narrator reminds us how seemingly minuscule events, like tossing tinsel or assassinated archdukes, escalate into global schisms.

Soul-rending and bleak! A perfect Christmas.

Haha, I love the use of the Academic who guides us through this terrible Christmas conflict! The notes they come out with the resulting future are hilarious yet scarily believable!
I am now thankful to my stance of letting my wife decorate the tree each year and smile while congratulating her on a good job done, for I have avoided such conflicts and time stopping academics wandering in! Great fun!

Christopher Soucy's Great Tinsel War of 1979 is a spot on skewering of Christmases past that we'd love to be able to say we don't recognize, but.... Instantly recognizable characters, snappy dialogue, but best of all, an "academic" on site to provide analysis into the developing "situation" and provide more than a little background on the developing crises. I particularly loved the leap into the future that comes at the end. Let's just remember that tinsel wars can have far reaching consequences, and that we'd better watch how we load that tree. Well done, Christopher Soucy!

This is farce done very well. The conflicts quickly build upon one another to a ridiculous extreme. "The Great Tinsel War of 1979" tweaks small family holiday conflicts and earnest documentary narration in a swift, funny 10 minutes.

"The Great Tinsel War of 1979" might not be gracing any history book pages any time soon, but it is sure to be a hit with audiences, thanks to Christopher Soucy's expert balancing of zany, yet familiar familial conflict and sober, documentarian reporting. The interplay of these sensibilities helps create laugh-out-loud moments that will stick with you after the play ends. A crowd-pleasing holiday romp.

I really need to find out how Christopher Soucy got hold of my family's photos and transcripts of our epic battles over decorating the Christmas tree and the ultimatums that came from them. Cunningly written as a documentary in the vein of the most earnest PBS/David Attenborough's explorations, we are immersed in the traditions and rebellions that bring us to the world of family dysfunction that somehow still manages to continue year after year. Brilliant, farcical, and eminently truthful.

"The Great Tinsel War of 1979" is a laugh-out-loud comedy about the conflict with the highest stakes: holiday traditions. Told as a Ken Burns-style mockumentary, the play exposes the raw nerves of two families, telling their stories with deadly seriousness and hilarious results.

Christopher Soucy reminds us that maybe we shouldn't hew to tradition so rigidly. I'd love to see this in a lineup of holiday shorts. The cast would have a ball with this play.