To misquote Tolstoy, all happy families are alike and all unhappy families sooner or later end up on the stage. From the house of Atreus to Jez Butterworth’s latest work, The Hills of California, presently on Broadway, familial dysfunction has been dissected and one could almost say celebrated innumerable times. Recent examples are usually built around a special occasion – a dying patriarch, a funeral, a wedding, Thanksgiving or Christmas – at which the mismatched relatives, steaming with long-held resentments for parents, siblings, children, or the odd second cousin, finally let loose in the third act. The standard scène à faire is a meal which is either partaken in strained silence (the only sound a ticking clock) or in a cacophony of angry voices and smashed crockery.