Making its U.S. debut on Thursday in the Brits Off Broadway season at 59E59 Theaters, Caroline’s Kitchen begins nicely with a recipe for Swedish meatballs and ends in chaos some 90 minutes later with blood and booze splashed all over the counters and linoleum.
It’s a comedy.
The ironic story spins around Caroline (Caroline Langrishe), a prettily-preserved, middle aged lady who presents to her many adoring fans the perfect image of a Food Network-type chef cooking up yummy fare in the handsome kitchen of her London home.
Let’s not spill all of the plot points, but the sunshiny Caroline and her bright life are eventually revealed to be less than ideal.
Caroline’s killjoy of a son (Tom England), just graduated from Cambridge, is a scruffy vegan whose dubious plans for the future run counter to his parents’ desires. Caroline’s adulterous husband (Aden Gillett), a reluctantly retired banker, sorely feels his age and the terrible sunburn he just acquired on the golf course.
Meanwhile, a tabloid paparazzo grabbed photos of Caroline keeling over in a drunken sprawl in the street the other evening, so her snarky new assistant (Jasmyn Banks), is yakking on the phone to the press and the network to dampen down the bad publicity.
Then there’s Caroline’s hunky young handyman (James Sutton), whose depressed wife (Elizabeth Boag) unexpectedly barges into the kitchen, obviously off her meds and raging with suspicions that he’s been cheating on her.
Everything boils over even as a nasty storm bursts overhead and whatever’s in the oven begins to burn. Caroline, steadily imbibing wine all afternoon, does not cope with these doings especially well.
Sound like fun to you? Apparently Caroline’s Kitchen is considered pretty funny by the critics in England, where it toured extensively and also enjoyed a six-week West End run late in 2018.
Torben Betts’ play is one of those Alan Ayckbourn sort of rueful British comedies where a bunch of self-absorbed individuals blithely stumble over each other’s personal follies. Sex, age, class, substance abuse, and religion (Caroline is a cheerfully lite Christian) are among the issues that obliquely pop up during these gradually darkening proceedings.
Caroline’s Kitchen is a neatly-written piece that is capably performed by a company of British actors. It tickled little more than an occasional chuckle out of me, let alone caused me to ponder its serious side. Possibly the subtleties of contemporary British humor escape me.
In developing his story, the playwright does not sufficiently establish Caroline’s status as a reigning TV diva—her modest operation does not in the least suggest a Martha Stewart-like empire—so the financial and professional stakes threatened by incipient scandals scarcely loom so terribly crucial here. It might also jack up the humorous level more had the playwright shown Caroline doggedly trying to cook the various courses of her menu amid the troubles blazing around her.
Probably these observations merely reveal my American hunger for this lightweight play to be a great big farce rather than a darkish little British comedy.
Alastair Whatley, the artistic director of the Original Theatre Company, which commissioned Torben Betts to write Caroline’s Kitchen, ably stages the play upon a rather blandly-designed setting, where his adept actors do their best to make a satisfying meal out of their clashing characters. Perhaps you’ll find this show to be a tastier morsel than I did, much as I remain a faithful fan of The Great British Baking Show.
