Still cooking: Sydney Festival’s The Kitchen

Staged in the Seymour Centre’s wide York Theatre, Sydney Festival’s The Kitchen – directed by Roysten Abel – is full of noise and light, but as a piece of theatre, it is strangely lacking.

The stage is dominated by a large golden tiered frame, seating twelve musicians, drummers, each playing the mizhav, one of the world’s oldest percussion instruments. The frame, like the drum itself, is shaped like a large pot-shaped vessel, and it resounds with the sharp metallic beat of the drums, pounding and resounding with intricate and furious rhythms. In front of the frame sit two cooks, each preparing a giant pot of payasam (a type of kheer), which is later served in the foyer following the performance.

Food with your play: Belvoir's Food

I’ve got a thing for theatre involving kitchens. Not necessarily sinks, just kitchens; little theatres of life, crucibles of thought and action, meeting places; familial communal spaces. I’d heard good things about Food, playing at Belvoir’s Downstairs theatre – very good things, in fact – and so this review comes from the closing weekend of its (already extended) season, something which only adds to the performance, I think: that it could be as fresh and as moving as it did at the end of its run means it’s a strong well-crafted piece of theatre. It’s about sisters Nancy and Elma who run a takeaway ‘restaurant’ on a highway, somewhere in Australia. Amongst the endless cycle of preparing food, the daily rut of serving the same customers the same thing day after day, comes a stranger, Hakan, a young traveler, who slowly – quickly – manages to bring the two sisters together, turning their world(s) upside-down.