It’s only fitting that, after a three-year hiatus, British author Janice Hallett has brought us “The Christmas Appeal” (Atria), a novella that returns her readers to the small but growing English community of Lower Lockwood to revisit the well-intentioned but hapless Fairway Players community theater troupe as it embarks on mounting its, Christmas panto, a production of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
For the uninitiated, a panto (short for pantomime) is a beloved tradition in the U.K. that presents a story loosely based on a well known, and well worn folk tale.
A family-oriented entertainment, pantos usually feature dancing, singing, terrible jokes, audience participation and — inevitably — a pantomime horse, or more accurately, two performers dressed in a horse costume.
The book’s subtitle — “One Christmas play. One dead Santa. Everyone’s a suspect...” — is a dead giveaway (pun intended) that the nonstop silliness will not begin or end with what the Fairway Players intend to present on stage.
Early on we learn that the proceeds from this particular production, held as always at the local church hall, are to be used for the repair of the church hall roof, which has been damaged as the result of a very large accumulation of bat guano, the weight of which has caused a partial collapse.
Hailed as the “modern Agatha Christie” by the British press Hallett carries Christie’s intricately crafted plot twists and dry wit to new heights. Honoring the interactive structure of a panto, she presents the reader with an immersive tale that dispenses with conventional storytelling and invites us to piece the story together as we follow a potpourri of verbal breadcrumbs pieced together from excerpts of email and IM exchanges from the members of the troupe, the county police report, snippets from the local newspaper and various and sundry other sources.
Initially we’re treated to a bird’s eye view of the petty posturing, minor intrigues, secret alliances and ego bruising that befalls virtually any community project. As a bonus, Hallett treats us to a send up of the holiday letter, the one many of us have received at one time or another, usually from folks to whom we are only loosely affiliated, creepily written in the third person, rife with virtue signaling, and extolling the absolutely fabulous year that they and their family have had.
If that were the sum and substance of “The Christmas Appeal,” it would merely be a ho ho hum read. But wait, there’s more. Better yet, don’t wait, read on to discover the cockamamie holiday gifts that Hallett has left for us to discover in her madcap whodunit. Like the rumor that the beanstalk prop that’s the centerpiece of the production is (or isn’t) made of asbestos. Or the corpse in the Santa suit that’s discovered hidden inside: how did he (or she) come to be entombed there, and when? Who among the Fairway Players knew what, and when? Was the death an accident, or was it...murder.
Most important of all: will the show go on, and if so will the Fairway Players raise enough money to raise the guano battered roof?
The answers to these and other life-altering questions are just a sampling of the boatload of red herrings you will encounter as you chuckle your way through what just may be the cure for the post-holiday blues.
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