Brighton Fringe 2025

Freezer Cake

Fitsnomore Productions

Genre: Solo Performance, Solo Play, Solo Show

Venue: Lantern Theatre

Festival: Brighton Fringe

Low Down

Review

Marco is our host, and a genial host he is too. Freezer Cake is a solo story-play set in a kitchen, which over the hour reveals itself as both a point of departure and of arrival for a young man reckoning with family, food, identity and legacy.

His family – Argentine immigrants to Guildford, a place described here as “a cultural wasteland” – bring with them a legendary barbecue tradition. This acts as a kind of cultural and emotional hearth, gradually forming the central image of the piece. Within this domestic arena, the ghosts and memories of Nona and Nonno surface, with particular intensity and affection.

This is a story-theatre piece. It operates on the edge between theatrical monologue and live literature, and currently hasn’t quite decided which it wants to be. Marco is a deft storyteller and a skilled performer who holds the space with erudition, gentleness, and measured honesty. He is unafraid to be still, but the stillness is not always theatrically active, and there are moments where the performance becomes too close to prose recital. The writing – articulate and often beautiful – occasionally feels too present in the mouth of the actor. It would benefit from a more dynamic use of theatrical language and physicality.

There is, nonetheless, a generosity in tone that the audience meets with deserved applause. The script contains bare honesty, though it wisely steers away from raw confessionalism. Pain is carefully selected and revealed through small physical gestures, the occasional prop, or a subtle shift in expression.

Some metaphors are overextended and don’t land, but much of the writing is sharp, observational and resonant. There is effective interplay between past and present-tense storytelling, and a visual, hilarious crescendo that I will not spoil – though it is as much about letting go as it is about holding on.

Thematically, the show touches on familiar territory – the pressure to fulfil familial expectations, the sacredness of inherited food traditions, vegetarianism as cultural heresy – but gives them texture through specific detail. The “Surrey meat elite” line, for example, is both comic and socially incisive. The unrecreatable recipe becomes metaphor, not cliché.

Characters are clearly sketched: a morally unsettling grandmother, a commitment-averse girlfriend  and, a loving grandfather with equal passions for family and fire. Their inclusion is purposeful and well-balanced, authentically sketched out and applied lovingly to the engaging narrative. Players in a story, incredients in life’s ragu! This is a beautiful hour from Marco. Thank you.

Staging is minimal. The Lantern Theatre offers an intimate space well-suited to this form, though inconsistency in prop use – some imagined, others physical – creates distraction. This inconsistency in tone and delivery is mirrored structurally: parts of the show feel dramaturgically resolved; others feel like prose placed on stage, competently spoken but theatrically inert.

Yet the piece does build. It moves toward a clownish, disarming crescendo – a scene that produces fits of laughter and unease in equal measure. The use of humour is never flippant. It’s tethered to a deeper emotional rhythm, rooted in Marco’s reflections on belonging, separation, and the weight of inherited narratives.

There are strong lessons, some stated, most not. One in particular lingers: that food is not only substance, but social environment and context. That idea threads quietly through the entire piece, revealed in how Marco handles memory, grief, tradition and change. It’s not overexplained. It’s earned.

This is a tale of thick-as-thieves families living in a country not their own, trying to fit in and stand apart, where one family member must become an outsider in order to remain authentic. That tension is never melodramatised – it’s presented with calm, lived-in clarity.

There is also the freezer cake. From Wisconsin. It appears late but leaves its mark, as both symbol and temptation. It’s funny, strange, and precisely judged.

The performance is ultimately both life-affirming and quietly tragic. Family, the show suggests, can be both life-denying and life-affirming. It depends on how you carry the weight – and who you let carry it with you.

And yes – there is an empanada place just down the road from the Lantern Theatre. After the show, I went straight there. It felt necessary.

Freezer Cake is already a strong piece of story-theatre. With further shaping – especially around its theatrical grammar and physical vocabulary – it has the potential to become something even more distinctive and formally resolved. It may also, in time, evolve into a novella or full-length novel. But in its current form, it is a heartfelt, considered and rewarding hour in capable hands.

Published May 10, 2025 by Paul Levy