FringeReview UK 2024
Casserole
Arcola Theatre & Actors East Theatre
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Arcola Theatre Studio 2
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Casserole is not just an exciting play, the finest two-hander I’ve seen this year. It’s a new way forward, as Actors East Theatre shift from fungus-infested basement in Dalston to a creative hub there, and partner with neighbours Arcola.
Director, actor, co-writer James Alexandrou, with co-writer/actor Kate Kelly-Flood, and co-writer Dominic Morgan bring Casserole – yes to the boil is predictable, and entirely right – till March 30th. What started as improv has been worked through to a tight script lasting 65 minutes.
One of the finest small-scale plays to come out of Arcola’s Studio 2 recently – and one can only hope Actors East forge a relationship with Arcola. This ensemble are ones to watch. Anything they do now should be snapped up. Meanwhile do see this.
Directed by James Alexandrou, Set Co-Designers Paulina Camacho, Paul Weedle, Costume Designer Carla Katie Mcgoldrick, Lighting Designer Kit Mackenzie, Sound Designers Paulina Camacho, Paul Weedle, Graphic Designer Emma Beinish, Producer Avital Lvova
Stage Manager Sophie Sparkes, Press Isobel Jaffray, Chloe Nelkin Consulting, Photography Simon Lex
Till March 30th
Review
Casserole is not just an exciting play, the finest two-hander I’ve seen this year. It’s a new way forward, as Actors East Theatre shift from fungus-infested basement in Dalston to a creative hub there, and partner with neighbours Arcola.
Director, actor, co-writer James Alexandrou, with co-writer/actor Kate Kelly-Flood, and co-writer Dominic Morgan bring Casserole – yes to the boil is predictable, and entirely right – till March 30th. What started as improv has been worked through to a tight script lasting 65 minutes.
Paulina Camacho and Paul Weedle have produced a set so naturalistic the green carpet ends under our feet. It’s a complete flat, with a bedroom off stage right with a divide, a living room with sofa, and to the left a working kitchen. The table and flat are strewn with a feeding frenzy and drinking session. Kit Mackenzie’s dingy lighting suffuses quiet desperation.
Dom (James Alexandrou) is repairing his bicycle in the home of girlfriend Kate (Kate Kelly-Flood). She’s just returned in a panic attack from a music video award she‘s set to receive later that night. She’d taken her brother James (yes the play of names is teasing), lost her mother, and chides glum Dom for bringing in his bike.
He’s dropped out, never quite made it in the same business. He’s got another idea: buy up all the sushi restaurant food at night before it goes off and mark it up. There’s 103 in London. Or he might go on a bicycle protest. Accusations simmer.
Kate’s losing her mother – hence the panic – is a keepsake she swiftly finds and she prepares to return, taking Dom with her this time. But as we peel layers of Kate’s guilt at not being at her mother’s death-bed, and Dom, the part-time carer, by contrast there, we discover more about then and now. What Kate doesn’t know will hurt her, when she does.
And there’s an opened casserole. Looks like the last one Kate’s mother left for her daughter, 10 months ago. And Dom has nonchalantly taken it out of the freezer and ignored the post-it.
What simmers up in this edgy stand-off of lovers at a crisis, recalls something charactered out of David Eldridge. Alexandrou’s hangdog Dom, all blokey remonstrance, resentment and hapless back-foot articulation, isn’t so far from Beginning. But that’s merely to frame Dom; since Alexandrou’s Don haunts his displacement: failure oozes from him, his life somehow seems slipping from his shoulders.
Kelly-Flood’s angular questions suggest more than guilt: Kate’s made it with little left in reserve. Her very success takes her away at crucial times The breadwinner she’s also the brooding loser. Dom after all was there. But even her guilt at not making it back in time isn’t as secure as she thinks.
Kelly-Flood’s emotional range shifts round Alexandrou’s bruising outbursts, needling and cajoling, begging and probing for answers. These are both extraordinary and viscerally detailed performances.
This is an engrossing play, packing far more than its length suggests. Daringly too it takes nearly five minutes to start with an inset with Dom threading and spinning an inner tyre. Alexandrou hulks over this Sisyphus-like task as if it’s all he has. Kelly-Flood harrows out her loss and frustration, her dependence and now perhaps her lack of it.
One of the finest small-scale plays to come out of Arcola’s Studio 2 recently – and one can only hope Actors East forge a relationship with Arcola. This ensemble are ones to watch. Anything they do now should be snapped up. Meanwhile do see this.
