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Rachel Roberts ©2025  Alex Fast as Luke and Emily Landham as Julie

The inarticulateness of youth is on full display in Chloe Moss’s incisive drama “Christmas Is Miles Away” presented by Babel Theatre Project at The Connelly Theatre. Moss, a British playwright and 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner, gives us best mates Luke, Christie and the girl that complicates their friendship, Julie (Roger Lirtsman, Alex Fast, and Emily Landman, respectively – all first-rate). It is 1989, the three are all about sixteen years old, living in Manchester where not a lot is going on for the working class, but a lot is falling apart. Moss understands the halting rhythms, the awkwardness, and the music (The Smiths and The Stone Roses, to name a few) of the three. In many ways, it is a love triangle Moss has written, and the easiness of the friendship between Luke and Christie as well as the humor they share at the beginning of the play makes what they have lost by the end devastating.

Luke and Christie pitch a tent and talk about girls, booze, and parents. The outdoors is where they feel free and at ease, as opposed to the confinement of their respective homes (notably, the only other setting is Christie’s literal box of a room). Christie’s father dies, rendering him nearly mute. Christie says, “Things will never be normal again.” Luke tries his best to cheer his friend up, and talks about the car he’s sure to get in the future. But Luke has his own problems, and in the end, under parental pressure to do something with his life decides to join the army. Though Luke loves nature, it seems there are no other options open to him other than the military. Christie, on the other hand, decides to go to art college and begins dating Julie, who does not really get Luke; nor does he get her. After a year or so, Luke sends Christie photographs reminiscent of Abu Graib that he has participated in, all done for a laugh. Luke is then discharged, assumably on PTSD, as he has to take meds and see a psychiatric nurse.

But this is a simplistic relaying of the plot, and the plot here is almost incidental. There are scenes that echo because they ring so true. Witness the uncomfortable exchange after Julie and Christie have sex for the first time, viewed through the window of Christie’s room. Their bodies aren’t touching. There isn’t closeness between them, only distance, and neither manages to say anything comforting to the other. Or Luke’s growing jealousy of the relationship between Julie and Christie; while they are out fishing together, Luke says to him, “Who’s the wife and who’s the mistress“” Or the misplaced anger Christie directs at Julie after he shows her Luke’s photographs; he tells her she was right about Luke, knowing she never liked him. Then he grabs his guitar to play her a song while she tries to discuss the photos, and Christie, unwilling to talk, orders her out of the room.

Rachel Roberts ©2025  Alex Fast as Christie and Roger Lirtsman as Luke

No one gets to say what they really want or need to say in “Christmas Is Miles Away” and one can only feel sympathy at the characters’ frustration. The last scene between Christie and Luke, after Luke has been discharged, takes place in the woods, but the freedom they once had with each other is now gone. Luke is unwilling to talk about what has happened, but does say, “Things will never be the same.” These words came once in the play, after a physical death. What is lost after a spiritual death can never be regained, neither for Luke nor Christie. Moss makes you feel the loss just as acutely as they do.