This bewilderingly unpleasant piece of new writing aims to explore our relationships with food, and with each other. It centres around an unsympathetic, dysfunctional couple the incommunicative and increasingly abusive Stephen, and the insecure and pathetically needy Claire. Although we trace their relationship from the first date to their increasing descent into mutual antipathy and boredom, its impossible to understand what keeps them together, given how profoundly unlikeable and clearly incompatible they are. Their interactions become increasingly nasty, as Stephen alternates between harassing Claire about her weight, and forcing food on her in ways that become tantamount to assault. In between these repulsive vignettes are interjections from an unnervingly frenzied TV chef, who bombards the audience with cheap food-based innuendo and pointlessly long recipes. The combination of bad writing, poor acting, slow pacing, and generally objectionable content meant I couldnt wait to leave the (uncomfortably intimate) theatre, above all to escape the lingering smell of ketchup and curry sauce that had been gratuitously smeared across the stage.
