Too Many Cooks

Postcard Review by Caroline Russell-King

Show – Too Many Cooks

Playwrights – Marcia Kash and Douglas E. Hughes

Production Company/Theatre space – Stage West

Length – 2 ACT (2 hours 5 minutes one intermission.)

Genre/s – Farce

Premise – During prohibition in Canada, the owner of a new restaurant tries to hire a famous singing chef for 60 guests, but when the chef is MIA chaos ensues as restaurateur is implicated in a bootleg operation run by mobsters from rival gangs.

Why this play? Why now? – Farce and dinner go together like salt and pepper.

Curiosities – I wondered why it had taken Stage West so long to produce this Canadian hit. Why was there an audience warning of strobe lighting?

Notable Moment – Formerly innocuous lines referring to Americans are delivered with current sensibilities. Great farce, like great blue cheese, has a delicious vein of politics and the audience laps it up.

Notable writing – Culinary comedians Kash and Hughes serve up a feast of a farce with this kitchen confidential comedy for Stage West’s audience to dine on. With eight in the cast, the playwrights concoct numerous saucy combinations of delightful duplicity, drunk acting, deception and double entendre.

Notable performances – Mark Weatherley, as the Canadian Basil Fawlty, heads up this collective of comedians complete with delicious Cleese-ian rants. A Braatz ladles out the laughs as the replacement chef with faux accents. Each cast member adds their own special ingredients into this delightful concoction - hams milking every laugh.

Notable design/Production – The most important part of the set design is adhering to the rules of door placement and function. Designer, Stage West veteran Sean D. Ellis provides this with the entrance to the restaurant, garbage shoot, doors to the cellar, kitchen, dining hall, and closet (for hiding contraband, corpses, and crooks). It would be grand if the walls didn’t jiggle, but it has always been thus.

Notable direction – Farce has a specific rhythm and J. Sean Elliot times this action with the skill of a Cordon Bleu chef.  In the past, J. Sean Elliott had to flavour weak farces with additional physical comedy and over-the-top acting. In this script there is so much humour he doesn’t have to guild the lunacy.

One reason to see this show –– We need laughter in our diet right now – 3 Michelin stars.