Edinburgh Fringe 2015
For the Love of Chocolate
Amanda Waring
Genre: Solo Show
Venue: Spotlites
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
This award-winning comedy has a cult following from headlining at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, at the Brighton Festival and in the West End of London. Let renowned actress and speaker Amanda Waring, accompanied by the virtuoso guitarist Andy Robinson, delight you with this highly acclaimed one-woman show, dripping with passion, magic and frivolity.
Review
Amanda Waring has revamped the show extolling chocolate she premiered at The Assembly Rooms ten years ago. Accompanied by the virtuoso guitarist Andy Robinson, Waring reveres the qualities of chocolate with passion, magic, and frivolity.
Waring is an actress, writer and producer with many performances to her credit including the title role of Gigi in the West End and singing for The Queen at the Royal Variety Performance. Her television appearances include ‘Casualty’, ‘Outside Edge’ and ‘A Month in The Country’. She is recognised as the country’s foremost inspirational speaker, film maker and writer on dignity, compassion and end of life care.
She appears on stage in a glorious red coat followed by Andy Robinson, her right hand man, accompanist and facilitator in a sombrero and moustache. She announces, “Who here is allergic to nuts?” and passes nuts around to the audience. She opens the show by explaining that when she was ten years old, her father took her to Mexico where she met Conchita, the Mexican housewife with a passion for life, love and all things chocolate. “Such is the power of chocolate,” she says. “We are going to let that power take us on a journey of life.”
She tells the audience her show is the story of her salvation through chocolate. She returns to England without discovering the secret ingredient that makes chocolate irresistible, but when she is twenty-one and living with an incontinent cat, she opens a box Conchita has given her. It contains many sayings that guide her on her search for the secret of chocolate’s charm and each new adventure teaches her more and more about life.
She finally realizes that the most fabulous ingredient in the good life is not chocolate but herself. She drenches herself in liquid chocolate to show the audience that what chocolate gives us is what we want to find in ourselves. It is an amazing finale to a show that involved the audience every step of the way. They tasted different varieties of chocolate, sampled chocolate nuggets and watched, fascinated, as Waring equated the virtues of its flavor to the virtues we all want to acquire.
The underlying message of the show is that when Waring is talking about searching for the secret ingredient in chocolate, she is really discussing her own search to define her destiny. All the characteristics of chocolate are the very characteristics that make us human.
The real value of the show is in Waring’s own personality. Her energy, her enthusiasm, her love of what she is trying to say combine to create a monologue, weak on substance and strong on charm. There is very little plot to this production and yet it is fascinating to watch. Waring keeps the pace rapid and varied. One leaves the show wondering why he had such a good time, and knowing that he did.
