What do you get when you mix a grumpy, lying, egocentric radio personality (possessed of a tongue dipped in venom and a broken leg) with a wealthy, conservative middle class family, newly-paroled homicidal convicts, hasty romantic liaisons, jealous ambitions, a smattering of Hollywood film stars, a sarcophagus, an axe murderer and even… penguins? Chaos, that’s what you get!

It’s Christmas time in early 1940’s America, and  famed author/critic Sheridan Whiteside accidentally breaks his leg whilst on a lecture tour in Ohio. As a result he’s stuck in the home of wealthy industrialist Ernest W. Stanley & family, forced to do his much-loved annual radio Christmas message to America in a local hick town rather than the glittering city of New York – and boy, is he not happy about it! And so the riotous shenanigans begin…

Whiteside proceeds to plunge the whole household into siege-like chaos, ruling as a tyrannical Czar, meddling in everyone’s lives and running roughshod over nearly all that he comes across, with hilarious results.A cross between Arsenic & Old Lace and The 39 Steps, Hart and Kaufman’s fiendish frolic of a farce was made into the highly successful 1943 Oscar Nominated Bette Davis and Monty Woolley film and is a veritable feast of wit and sophistication.