When November comes and people begin thinking about the impending holidays, good cheer is let loose in the land. So is anxiety. Indeed, it may be that anxiety is the far more prevalent condition; it certainly seems to be in this post-Freudian age when 12-step meetings are jammed with men and women questioning loudly and painfully whether they will join family get-togethers or whether, for sanity's sake, they'll avoid them like the plague.

That universal dilemma is addressed by Paula Vogel in The Long Christmas Ride Home, just now opening (and cleverly timed!) at the Vineyard Theatre, where the same playwright introduced New Yorkers to her Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned to Drive[...]