THURROCK Courts Players have looked to playright Alan Ayckbourn again for their next offering at the Thameside Theatre.

The group will perform the comedy Season’s Greetings at the theatre, in Orsett Road, Grays, from February 7 to 9 at 7.45pm.

The play, about an eventful get together on Christmas Eve, premiered in 1980 and has been performed regularly ever since.

The BBC showed it on TV in 1986 and comedienne Catherine Tate starred in a production at the National Theatre in 2010.

A spokesman for Thurrock Courts Players said: “It’s Christmas Eve and Neville and his wife Belinda are the hosts, entertaining a former colleague of Neville’s and his heavily pregnant wife.

“Both marriages are desperately unhappy, the husbands complacent bores, the wives feeling unloved and neglected.

“The explosive cherry on the comic cake is Neville’s near-psychopathic security guard of an uncle, who wears a knife strapped to his calf.

“He is giving all the kiddies guns for Christmas and has prepared a few nasty surprises for the grown-ups too. Then something more disastrous occurs.”

Tickets for the show are £10, reduced to £8 for concessions.

To book, pop into the box office at the theatre, or call 0845 3005264.