We all know the plays I’m talking about, right?  The characters are usually family or very close friends and they enter the play facing hardship or strife.  Conflicts may be aired but the True Meaning of Christmas finally gets through and everyone remembers the Reason for the Season and makes up in time to unwrap presents.  Cue the Figgy Pudding and Curtain, we’re finished. 

Well, those don’t do it for me.  I watched “Father Knows Best” episodes when I was a kid and those happy families on the stage only added to my confusion and neurosis.  I’ll take the dysfunctional Plantagenet family in “The Lion in Winter” for Christmas instead.  They show me I’m not  insane.

James Goldman’s”The Lion in Winter” is a fictional take on the real life Plantagenet family and their problems in 1183.  The patriarch, Henry had been King of England nearly thirty years by then and time was catching up to him.  It was time to reflect on his accomplishments, (he reigns over England and controls a good bit of France) think about retirement and (to quote Lear) ” shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths.”   At least that’s what his sons want him to do.

Henry’s three living sons, Richard (yes, the Lionheart) Geoffrey and John have gathered with their parents this Christmas to hear which of them will inherit Daddy’s title and real estate.  The original Heir Apparent has died and any of them could be named as next in line for the goodies. Naughty boys: they don’t want to share.   Add that Philip, the King of France, is also here to force Henry to complete a long-made agreement and you can see that there’s too much testosterone in the room.

Now this might make Henry prefer the company of his women-folk but not in this instance.  Henry’s wife is the incredible Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of power and looks who has been Queen of England and France in her time and holder of some of that prime French Real Estate her husband has covered with troops.  Eleanor has no qualms about disinheriting two of her boys; in her mind everything, including her holdings, should go to Richard.  Her source of irritation is her wayward husband who chased every skirt in Western Europe and caught far too many of them.  The latest skirt is Alais, Philip’s sister and Richard’s designated bride by treaty.  With Alais goes another section of French property, the Vexin.  As Henry points out, leaving everything to Richard is a guarantee England will be at war as soon as he dies:

HENRY: Once I’m dead, who’s to be king?  I could draw papers till my scribes drop or the ink runs out and once I died, unless I’ve left behind me three contented sons, my lands will split three ways in civil war.  You see my problem?

 The play is one giant chess game where any member of the family seeks to use the others as pawns to get their own way.  Henry is brilliant, tossing out tactic after tactic to keep everyone else off balance and make the ending come out his way but his match is Eleanor.  She’s outrageous, manipulative, witty, regal and of all the characters the saddest because her central motivation is the simplest: she wants her husband’s attention.  When it wanders, she acts out and by this time she’s behaved so badly that Henry has to keep her in prison, except for holidays; the last time she got loose, she manipulated the boys into rebelling against him.  Still these two grand rulers have great affection for each other that shows up when they’re not fighting.  They put the fun back in dysfunctional.

The play is a dream to read or to act; these are the parts thespians chew the curtains for.  (Incidentally, the play did not fare well until the 1968 film came out; since then it’s been a regular draw in stock and amateur productions.)  I’ll direct you to a list of quotes from the screenplay but I will say my favorite comes when Eleanor has seen all of her plans crash into ruin.  She stares at the mess life and Christmas have become and says, “Well, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?”  To someone who saw their share of Christmas dramas, that question unraveled a world of meaning.

Now my family didn’t play for regal stakes and we never approached this level of anger (neither of my parents attempted a coup d’état or imprisoned the other for the effort) but it was enough for the play to show me that people who loved each other could also inflict great harm.  We didn’t have to be the Cleavers and if we were a bit abnormal, so what?  Every family has its ups and downs.