Tenpenny Parks

If you’re looking for a big bright themed game, this one would be pretty hard to beat. Colorful, carnival, die-cut cardboard, tiny wooden trees. Really nice looking. And it plays good too. Set collection, worker placement, tile placement, money management. Reminds me a little of Small World in that it’s a lot of pieces to get out and organize and move around, but you’re rewarded with a lot of fun.

Roar and Write

An unfortunate naming coincidence here: This is not Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n’ Write, but it is a bit confusing. They’re both roll-and-writes that involve animals, but that’s about as far as it goes. Nicely themed with custom dice and good artwork. There are individual player goals, but otherwise it’s solitaire. A short, light one. Nothing wrong with that.

Mountains Out Of Molehills

This is a fun one. Two different kinds of spatial thinking on a 3D board, with a little programmed movement thrown in. The components are ok, though the plastic molehills are a little weird to handle and the moles would be nicer as minis than cardboard standees.

Dodos Riding Dinos

This one was a brightly-colored zany race. I thought my kids might like it. There were some dexterity things to it. That’s about all I remember about it.

Santorini

I was skeptical of this. I’d heard about it before, but the cartoon-y box art put me off. It’s a surprisingly complex puzzle game and I enjoyed it a lot. I’d probably like to have a copy of this.

Ark Nova

This was the last game we played, mostly because of the hype. We didn’t figure we’d even be able to get through it before the convention closed, and indeed we did not. There are a lot of moving pieces here, but it does all fit together ok. Just a lot to take in. I think I’d like to play a complete game of it at some point.


Geekway 2022: OverviewDay 1Day 2Day 3Day 4

Free Ride

Yet Another Train Game. I liked it though. The art is nice, especially the old timey photos of cities on the “tickets”, although sometimes they could be hard to match up with the map. That’s probably mitigated the more you play though. The rails and player indicators can be a little fiddly, but they work well for what they need to do. I enjoyed the combination of building routes and moving along them, as opposed to a focus on building or on moving.

Museum: Pictura

This is a really stylish set-collection game. It was a lot bigger on the table than I anticipated and when setting it up, it feels big. But it isn’t too bad once you get into it. I liked the variety of art, and the idea of arranging it into your gallery in a particular way.

Floriferous

After a big game, a smaller game that looked just as nice. It’s a quick, light drafting/set collection game that’s themed well. Nice and chill.

Small Islands

A tile-placement game where you’re building, well, small islands. There’s some nice short- and long-term strategy in this one, though there were a couple times I got bit by either forgetting I already had a house on an island or if two incomplete islands got connected unexpectedly. One thing I tend not to like in games is when players decide when the game is over or moves to the next phase, which happens here.

Momiji

This is a hand-management set-collection game. The tree theme and sequencing numbers aspects might remind you of Arboretum. There’s a bit of a spatial aspect too, with ordering your piles of leaves. Otherwise there’s not much connection. Nicely illustrated, not too complicated. Quite replayable with different objectives and different player powers.

The Red Cathedral

There is a lot in a little box. It takes a while to get into the rhythm of this one, but once we did I really enjoyed it. I especially liked the round track and dice mechanic for gaining resources. It’s semi-random but offering choices in an interesting way. A deceptively (from the box size) complex game, and in the end you get to build something.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr and Write

We won a copy of this one. If The Red Cathedral was deceptively complex for being in a small box, this one is doubly so for being in a small box but also a roll-and-write. And by complex, I mostly mean it took a long time to get through the rules. Once we started playing, it moved along ok. There are a lot of steps on a given turn, but they mostly don’t take a lot of time. There’s player interaction in the form of dice drafting, so it isn’t entirely solitaire. And the dice are nice and chunky. Once you get through the rules, this is a fun one.

Cascadia

A great puzzle game that won the Spiel des Jahres this year. It looks nice, it plays relatively quickly, it’s a thinker, it’s themed well. What’s not to love?

7 Wonders: Architects

Yet Another 7 Wonders Game. This one uses cards and the familiar symbols and themes of 7 Wonders to let players construct the titular 7 Wonders piece by piece. Being able to build each wonder is clever, and they each do different things, adding replayability. A nice light introduction to the world of 7 Wonders.


Geekway 2022: OverviewDay 1Day 2Day 3Day 4

Life got in the way, so here it is November and I’m writing up Day 2 of Geekway. Temper my game reviews with the fact it’s been six months since I played these.

Azul: Queen’s Garden

This was a nice followup in the Azul series. I enjoyed the multiple scoring strategies — sometimes I’m a fan of that and other times it seems overwhelming, but this seems more compact, for lack of a better word.

Murano Light Masters

This one seems a little less polished than some of the bigger games, but it has some interesting bones. I liked the board and glass-piece “drafting” mechanics. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Long Shot: The Dice Game (4 players)

One of the stars of the convention for me. I really enjoyed this dice-rolling, roll-and-write horse racing game. There’s a lot going on, but it all mostly makes sense, and you get to make a lot of choices that usually feel important. There are a few situations, particularly toward the end, where it seems like you almost run out of useful things to do. Swapping out different horses adds to the already pretty-high replayability (given the dice rolls). One of the things I like most about this one is how social it is. We bought a copy for us and a copy for someone else immediately.

Creature Comforts

Great art, an interesting twist on worker placement, some ways to mitigate bad rolling luck, tons of cards for replayability. What’s not to like? This one is meant to be “cozy”, and it hits the mark.

Switch & Signal

A real puzzler. It’s a good co-op game that seems pretty replayable. It’s simple to understand, but there are some hard and risky choices to make along the way. Quarterbacking potential is pretty high here (as with many co-ops), but sometimes it seems like there isn’t a definite correct choice, so there’s room for discussion.

Café

I really liked this one as well. A small package with a lot going on. The art is nice, the overlapping cards mechanic is interesting and occasionally infuriating. I guess it’s an engine-builder that doesn’t really seem like an engine-builder. My only quibble might be the tiny cubes can be hard to manipulate. But overall, great. Will probably buy this one.

Berried Treasure

A reimplementation of an older game, this is a nice, quick, casual game. It’s extremely interactive and some “take that”. Sometimes it feels a little like one of those “there are X pieces of candy in a row, on your turn you can choose one or two pieces, how can you ensure you take the last piece” puzzles, but there’s a bit more going on. A fun filler game.


Geekway 2022: OverviewDay 1Day 2Day 3Day 4

Got a bit of a late start to the day, but I think we arrived and got our badges and everything by 10:30 or 11. Still, it wasn’t too busy. This year, the organizers split the main hall into two sections, one mask required and one mask-optional. Additionally, of the two playing areas upstairs, one was mask required and the other was mask-optional. The mask-optional areas seemed to be a bit more busy more of the time, but both areas got substantial use (and playing in the mask-required areas was a lot quieter).

Caper: Europe

The first game we played was Caper: Europe. Really enjoyed this one.

Caper: Europe is a two-player game where you draft cards to try and control locations and score points. You run a spy network, trying to take over three locations in whatever city you’re playing in that game. You deploy spies and equip them to steal loot, tip the location in your favor or score points directly.

The card drafting works well, though it took me some time to wrap my head around the tempo. Each round you’re drawing a different number of cards, so how many times you pass the cards back and forth changes.

As you build up your spy network over the course of the game, your options increase, but it never feels overwhelming. Your strategy may adapt according to what the other player does or what cards come out, but it rarely felt like I didn’t have a meaningful choice to make.

There are four cities included and within each city you don’t use all the locations each time (and of the other cards, you might discard rather than play with them), so replayability feels very high. We played twice, each of us winning one game and each game decided by only one point.

The art is very appealing and the components feel nice. It plays quick once you understand what you’re doing. I liked this one quite a bit.

New York Zoo

Next up was New York Zoo, another Uwe Rosenberg tile-laying game. Previously we’ve played Patchwork, Cottage Garden, Indian Summer and Spring Meadow, and this is in a similar vein. It adds enough new to keep it interesting. I liked it.

You are building a zoo. You place enclosures and fill them with animals. Enclosures with two or more animals will sometimes breed and produce another. When an enclosure is filled, you earn a bonus tile that can help you fill in odd holes in your board. Whoever completes their zoo first wins.

As I mentioned, the basic mechanics of “fill up this space with differently-shaped tiles” duplicate other games by this designer. But the strategy in choosing and placing animals and the cascading effect they can have when breeding adds a new level.

Again, the decision space is limited (you can choose from a few options to begin your turn, once you’ve made that choice, you usually have a few options for resolving your turn, and that’s about it). There are enough choices to feel consequential yet not enough to be paralyzing. The end-game can be particularly strategic, where it felt like you’d often have just enough moves to win, or be one step away from victory, frustratingly (but in a good way).

The components here are nice, especially the animal meeples. There are different starting boards for different player counts (the more players you have, the smaller the area you have to fill). Replayability feels very high because of the random setup. Another good one.

Savannah Park

A hidden gem, I think. This one looked a little cartoony and simple, but turned out to be a thinker. I liked it a lot more than I expected.

In Savannah Park, you’re a park ranger trying to organize a random jumble of animals into contiguous herds, and avoid wildfires. You get points for having large herds of the same type of animal together, as long as there’s at least one watering hole in the group.

I wasn’t excited about this when we started setting it up, but it turned out to have a lot more depth than I anticipated. You randomly set up a lot of hex tiles on your board. Each tile has an animal or animals on it, some of them also have watering holes. Then, you take turns choosing a tile. Both players will pick up the same tile (“one elephant”, for example). Then, they’ll place the tile in an open space on their board. The tile is flipped on both boards to signify it has been moved. It’s locked in place for the rest of the game. Once all the tiles have been moved once, the game is over.

Seemed too simple and random, but it turns out to be quite the puzzle. There are two complications: One is that some tiles have multiple types of animals, and that tile will count in the herds for all the types of animals on it (e.g. there’s one tile with all the different animals). The other is that each board has three bush fires, with 1, 2 and 3 flames. At the end of the game — before scoring — any animal tiles touching bush fire tiles that have the same number of flames as animals (e.g. fire tile with 1 flame touching the tile with 1 elephant) get “scared off” and are removed from the board.

Because you can only move a tile to an empty spot, and there aren’t that many empty spots at the beginning of the game, you really have to plan ahead, and also hope your opponent doesn’t want to move a tile before you have its spot ready. It reminded me a bit of one of those 15-tile puzzles where you slide the tiles around to get them in order.

The components and art here are fine. I don’t particularly like the style, but at its heart it’s a good pattern building game that is virtually infinitely replayable. A nice surprise.

Curious Cargo

There is such a thing as too much choice. My wife and I watched video reviews of many of the games before the convention, so we’d know which ones we might be interested in and which ones to avoid. This was one I definitely wanted to try, and I’m glad we did. And I’m not so sure I wouldn’t play it again. But it’s a lot.

In Curious Cargo, you’re hooking up machines to supply and receive goods via pipes. You also ship and receive those goods on trucks. If you have a truck with an empty space next to a shipping space that’s hooked up with a pipe to a machine, you ship a good. If you have a truck with a good on it next to a receiving space that’s hooked up with a pipe to a machine, you receive a good. You can win the game by making lots of simultaneous connections, by shipping a lot of goods or by receiving a lot of goods.

If that sounds like a lot, it’s a lot. It feels like there’s about a game and a half packed in to this one. It was the second “heaviest” game we played at the convention, according to Board Game Geek ratings. And it felt that way.

It was difficult enough to make one connection from a machine to an edge space, and one of the win conditions is to have ten simultaneously. Each tile has a very large number of possible positions, and since you can stack tiles, that problem space is never reduced during the game. And you often have multiple tiles to choose from when considering placement.

The trucking phase has a lot less choice because you play trucks based on cards (a card deploys a specific truck), but because it took so long to start making the connections, it was tough to get started.

We wanted to get back for dinner, so we gave up on this one maybe half-way through (I say maybe because I really have no idea how long it would’ve lasted). There’s often a game or two where we finish and wonder if maybe we played it wrong because it seemed way too easy or way too difficult or just off. This one felt this way. I’m not sure we missed anything, I think it’s just very complex.

I’m not so sure I wouldn’t like it if I played it more. The art is good. The components are good. I even like the concept. And there’s a variant with three colors of pipes instead of two, in case the base game wasn’t complex enough as it is. But at least during an initial playthrough, this one kind of broke our brains, and not in a great way.

Welcome to the Moon

After meeting up with a few friends for dinner, we decided to check this one out since it could play up to six. I guess it could probably play up to infinity if you had enough score sheets. It’s a flip-and-write (similar to a roll-and-write) with a little player interaction.

Welcome to the Moon is part of a “Welcome to…” series. We played the first one, “Welcome to Your Perfect Home” at a previous Geekway, and enjoyed it. As with New York Zoo, this uses the same basic concept but builds on it significantly.

In Welcome to the Moon, you’re using the results of card combinations to fill in spots on your score sheet in numerical order. You can earn certain bonuses for filling in different sections, and kick off chain reactions. There are also a few missions all players are racing to complete. There are eight different adventures (we played the first one) and you can chain them all together in a campaign mode.

There were a surprising amount of instructions, and then when we got to the specific instructions for the first adventure, we found that some of the previous instructions didn’t seem to apply. But, once we got into the game, it went fast and made sense.

As with most of these roll-and-writes, there wasn’t a lot of player interaction. Occasionally someone triggers a “sabotage” that affects other players. And players race for objectives, getting more points for earning them first.

The theming is nice and the game is simple enough that it’s easy to pick up and play, but there’s enough depth to keep it interesting. And that’s all without playing the other adventures or campaign mode. I’d like to check those out to see what they’re like sometime. I liked this one.

Furnace

After watching some of the preview videos, this one was one I was really excited about. It’s a pretty compact game, components-wise, but has a ton of replayability built in.

Furnace is an engine-building game where you bid on factories and then use those factories to gain resources and convert them into cash. We played this at two, where there’s a dummy third player for the bidding round, which works surprisingly well. Oh, and there are only four rounds, so it goes by pretty quickly and every choice feels important.

The bidding mechanism is interesting. Each player has wooden tokens labeled 1-4 (and sized respectively). The highest bid on a factory wins it. But, if you bid on a factory you don’t win, you get some compensation that’s listed on the card, and you multiply it by your non-winning bid. So if I bid 3 and you bid 4, you get the factory, but I get whatever compensation is listed on the card, times 3.

Once the factories and compensation are awarded, it’s time to run your production chain. You activate your factories one by one, but only once each per round. So, you have to decide the most efficient order to activate them in, in order to produce resources, convert them into other resources, or convert them into money (which is what is scored at the end of the game). You also can produce and use upgrade tokens to upgrade your factories to perform an additional function.

There is also a variant where you run your factory in order from left to right, so when you win a new factory from the auction you have to decide where to place it but then must leave it there for the rest of the game. The game is complex enough without that, I think, but it might be an interesting challenge once you’re more familiar with the game.

I thought I’d really like this one, and I did. The art and style is great. The components, especially the auction disks, are well done. It’s short, and pretty fast once you understand what you’re doing. The engine building is fun. The only sticking point is that once you’ve accumulated more than a few factories, you have a lot of choices for what order to activate them in, which can be a little overwhelming. But since you’re building your empire factory-by-factory, you usually have a good idea of where a new one might slot in in the order. And of course if you’re playing the variant that runs them right to left your choice is limited to where you place the factory when you get it.

Day 1 wrapup

And that was day 1. If I had to rank these games, I’d probably go:

1) Furnace
2) Caper: Europe
3) Savannah Park
4) New York Zoo
5) Welcome to the Moon
6) Curious Cargo

But I don’t like ranking games — too much depends on my mood. Savannah Park and New York Zoo are probably virtually tied. Welcome to the Moon seems like a different type of game altogether — good if there are a lot of people, and good if I want to play a game on my own or maybe even do a campaign-style thing. Even Curious Cargo may be getting short shrift here if I played it more.

Anyhow, those are the six we played on Day 1 of Geekway 2022.


Geekway 2022: OverviewDay 1Day 2Day 3Day 4

And just in time for Geekway 2023, kicking off this Thursday, here’s my review of Geekway 2022. I previously wrote about Geekway 2018, 2019 and 2021.

Geekway 2022 kicked off Thursday, May 12 and finished Sunday, May 15. My wife and I managed to play 28 different games, a new high for us.

The convention required attendees to show proof of vaccination, and all public areas (and some gaming areas) were mask-required. This differed from the convention they held last fall where the whole thing was mask-required. The organizers sent out a survey a couple weeks ago asking folks whether they preferred mask-required or mask-optional for playing, and allocated space accordingly. From what I could tell, people were pretty cognizant of the space they were in and acted accordingly.

Aside from our first year (IIRC), we’ve always gotten patron tickets to support the convention and also to get early access to the hotel room block. But another benefit is that Geekway always does a great job with the patron swag. This year’s was an extremely soft blanket, printed with the theme this year, a dinosaur background with a Jurassic Park-style logo. Previous years have included, among other things, nice game bags and snap-together dice trays, both of which we got use out of at this convention.

Some stats: All but 8 of the 28 games we played were published in 2021 or 2022. The average Board Game Geek rating — how good folks who rank games on that website think it is — was 7.5. We played games ranging from 6.4 (Murano Light Masters) to 8.7 (Ark Nova). The average weight — how difficult people who rank the game think it is to play, on a scale of 1 to 5 — was 2.2. This ranged from 1.0 (Berried Treasure) to 3.72 (Ark Nova again). The median rank — out of all the games, the website knows about, where does this one place on a list sorted by rating — was 1,782. The lowest ranking was Mountains Out of Molehills, at 14,000+, while the highest was, you guessed it, Ark Nova, placing 15th out of the 20,000+ games the site has ranked.

These ratings and rankings can change over time, of course — games that are new have been played, and therefore rated, by fewer people. Conversely, initial enthusiasm for a game can wear off.

Anyhow, all the games we played except the final two on Sunday were from the Play and Win library, where after playing a game, you can choose to be entered to win a copy of it after the convention is over. These are usually the newest games, and there are five or six copies of each in the library. There were 80 different games in the Play and Win, so we got to play through nearly one out of three.

We wound up winning copies of Dinosaur Island: Rawr and Write, and Furnace. Previous wins have included Root, Holi and Blossoms, among others.

Here’s a full list of what we played (everything at 2 players, unless otherwise noted):

Thursday:

  • Caper: Europe
  • New York Zoo
  • Savannah Park
  • Curious Cargo
  • Welcome to the Moon (6 players)
  • Furnace

Friday:

  • Azul: Queen’s Garden
  • Murano Light Masters
  • Long Shot: The Dice Game (4 players)
  • Creature Comforts
  • Switch & Signal
  • Café
  • Berried Treasure

Saturday:

  • Free Ride
  • Museum: Pictura
  • Floriferous
  • Small Islands
  • Momiji
  • The Red Cathedral
  • Dinosaur Island: Rawr and Write
  • Cascadia
  • 7 Wonders: Architects

Sunday:

  • Tenpenny Parks
  • Roar and Write
  • Mountains Out Of Molehills
  • Dodos Riding Dinos
  • Santorini
  • Ark Nova

I get that AI language models might take all our jobs and run the world, but I don’t know that I’ll discover a more entertaining use for them than pretending to be Don Draper. It helps that I can read things in Jon Hamm’s voice in my head.

As Don Draper, I would begin my pitch for bananas by setting the scene:

“Picture a bustling city street corner, filled with the sounds of honking horns, chattering pedestrians, and the hum of industry. Amidst the chaos, a vendor stands behind his cart, proudly displaying his wares. And at the center of it all, shining like a beacon of health and vitality, are the bananas.”

Then, I would launch into my Mad Men-style pitch, using the power of storytelling and emotion to capture the audience’s attention and highlight the value of bananas:

“Bananas are more than just a fruit – they’re a symbol of vitality and strength. With their vibrant yellow skin and succulent flesh, bananas are a sensory delight that energizes the body and nourishes the soul.

But bananas are more than just a treat – they’re a nutritional powerhouse. Packed with vitamins, minerals, and fiber, bananas are a natural source of energy that help you feel your best all day long. Whether you’re running a marathon or running errands, bananas are the perfect snack to keep you going strong.

And the best part? Bananas are easy to enjoy anywhere, anytime. Whether you’re peeling one on the go or slicing it into your morning cereal, bananas are a versatile and convenient way to get the nutrients and energy you need.

So the next time you’re feeling sluggish or rundown, reach for a banana. With every bite, you’re not just eating a fruit – you’re tapping into a source of vitality and strength that will help you conquer the day. And that’s the power of bananas.”

Just realized ChatGPT can communicate as Don Draper and this is how I’ll be doing everything from now on.

Prompt: “You are Don Draper. Write and deliver a pitch for the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.”

As Don Draper, I would begin my pitch for the New York Times Crossword Puzzle with a classic, Mad Men-style one-liner:

“You don’t have to be a genius to solve the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, but you might feel like one when you’re finished.”

Then, I would launch into my pitch, using the power of words and storytelling to make the audience see the value and appeal of the crossword puzzle.

“Picture this: It’s a lazy Sunday morning, and you’re sitting at your kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee. You’re flipping through the pages of the New York Times, and there it is – the crossword puzzle. You think to yourself, ‘I’ll just take a quick peek,’ but before you know it, you’re fully immersed in the challenge.

There’s something special about the New York Times Crossword Puzzle – it’s not just a game, it’s a mental workout. You’ll flex your vocabulary, your critical thinking skills, and your ability to think outside the box. And when you finally fill in that last square, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that’s hard to beat.

But the New York Times Crossword Puzzle isn’t just for solitary Sunday mornings. It’s a shared experience, a conversation starter, a way to connect with others who appreciate the art of wordplay. Whether you’re solving it with your spouse over breakfast, your coworkers on your lunch break, or your friends at a party, the crossword puzzle brings people together.

And let’s not forget about the competitive aspect. The New York Times Crossword Puzzle has been challenging puzzle lovers for over 75 years, and it’s still going strong. You can compete against yourself, trying to beat your own time and accuracy, or you can join the ranks of crossword champions who have conquered the puzzle’s most challenging clues.

So why advertise the New York Times Crossword Puzzle? Because it’s more than just a puzzle – it’s a tradition, a legacy, and a source of intellectual stimulation. It’s a timeless classic that deserves to be celebrated and shared with a new generation of puzzle enthusiasts.

In short, the New York Times Crossword Puzzle is the ultimate brain teaser, the perfect way to start your day, and a symbol of excellence in wordplay. So the next time you open up the New York Times, don’t just read the news – challenge yourself with the puzzle that’s been stumping and delighting readers for generations.”

This is a lovely little English Christmas film from 1952, adapted from a 1950 play. A small-town parson’s family returns home to the vicarage for Christmas after he became a widower earlier that year: Son Michael (Denholm Elliott), serving in the military; daughter Jenny (Celia Johnson) who lives at the vicarage taking care of her father, Martin, the parson (Ralph Richardson); and eventually, daughter Margaret (Margaret Leighton), a fashion journalist in the city. Other houseguests include a voice-of-reason cousin Richard (Hugh Williams) and a duo of aunts, deemed by TCM host Ben Mankiewitz as “one grand, the other grumpy” (Margaret Halstan, Maureen Delany).

The ostensible conflict is that caretaker Jenny wants to marry a neighbor, an engineer being sent to South America (John Gregson), but feels she can’t abandon her father. But as the guests arrive it becomes clear the underlying issue is the three children believe they can’t communicate with their father on a personal level, given his religious calling.

Not to spoil a 70-year-old movie, but it turns out Ralph Richardson plays a reasonable man.

Richardson, a prolific English actor, performed from the 1920s to 1983 including as a member and co-Director of the Old Vic and on Broadway. He was nominated for three Tonys, two Oscars and a Grammy.

Leighton also performed with the Old Vic and made her Broadway debut in 1946 as the Queen in Henry IV, also starring Richarson as well as Laurence Olivier. Leighton was nominated for four Tonys, winning two, two Emmys, winning one, and an Oscar; her first Tony, in 1957 for ‘Separate Tables’ came the same year Richardson was nominated for ‘The Waltz of the Toreadors’.

Johnson performed between 1928 and 1981, including on Broadway. She was nominated for an Academy award for 1945’s ‘Brief Encounter’.

Elliott — I recognized him as Marcus Brodie in ‘Raiders’ — has more than 100 film and TV credits. Like his character, he served in the military. A member of the RAF, his bomber was downed in a raid on some U-boat pens and he spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. He debuted in 1949 and performed through 1992, when he died. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1986 for ‘A Room with a View’.

Halstan debuted in theater in 1895 and acted in her first film in 1916. She performed ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ in both the stage and screen versions.

Delaney, an Irish actress, debuted in 1914. She was nominated for a Tony for 1959’s ‘God and Kate Murphy’.

There’s also a small cameo by William Henry Hartnell, better known as the first Doctor Who.

Richardson, as I said, plays a reasonable man, if a bit aloof. Leighton plays dark and sophisticated, but ultimately vulnerable. Johnson is her opposite: caring and sacrificing herself to keep the family running. Elliott is impish and impudent enough to (finally) speak the truth about the family’s dynamics.

There’s a delightful bit of framing when the Martin is confronting his son about drinking too much, where Martin is standing behind a sparse Christmas tree looking much like a priest concealed in a confessional, rather than a father talking to his son.

It’s such a cozy little play; theatrical even in the filmed version. I’d very much like to see it on the stage, but I sure am glad this film with these distinguished actors exists. At one point Williams’ character says “Cheer up Mick, old boy, in a hundred years we’ll all be dead.” As far as I can tell, everyone involved with the film is, in fact, dead. But their performances have brought me joy for several years now, and hopefully will for many years into the future.


“One regards oneself as an individual, Aunt Bridget. Types are other people.” — Margaret Gregory

“Don’t you know I doubt if half of them have the faintest conception of what I’m here for. They think I’m paid to marry them and bury them and sign their pension papers for them, just like a civil servant.” — Martin Gregory

“You can’t be told the truth. That’s the trouble, the whole trouble.” — Michael Gregory

“I’m out all day scribbling smart, highly paid nonsense that earns the rent of a wonderful flat that I can’t bear to stay in alone for five minutes when I get back in the evening.” — Margaret Gregory