Left – Katrina Rautenberg Early on in Daniela Giorgi's The Poor Kitchen, Elle, is excited about the olive farm in Italy she has inherited. Not because she harbours any romantic “Under the Tuscan Sun” fantasies, but because she intends to sell it and use the dough to break into the Sydney real estate market.
The inheritance has come as a surprise because her Italian father, who fled his homeland at a young age severed all links with the old country. His daughter strikes one as being so old school Australian the only spaghetti she'd know about was out of a tin.
Not that Giorgi's play is a Tuscan Sun rom-com. Indeed, it is at pains to to eschew that kind of show, opening with a blitz of Italian caricatures, stereotypes, “whatsamatteryou” and the musical strains of That's Amore, and then being abruptly told by it's most energetic and endearing character, Anna, that this is not that kind of play, and the players reconvene as characters true to the tone of the play proper.
The inheritance has come as a surprise to the Italians too. There's been a sudden change in will and Elle's father's sister has left the whole pit and cabana to her.
This does not sit well with Carlo, who along with his wife Giulia, has been tending the farm, ministering it with tender mercies to become sustainable, championing natural agriculture, including the husbandry of bees. His concerns are both personal and ecological.
The sinister family solicitor, on the other hand, doesn’t know apiary from napery but is well acquainted with avarice and is determined to pry the property from Elle through piss-ant extortion preying on her lack of local knowledge.
Greenie Carlo laments that wolves had been eradicated from the surrounding forest by fusilier farmers but there seems no such short supply of lupine in human form, and Mark Langham fits the bill as the unctuous attorney ready to fleece the Antipodean lamb, Elle, played by Katrina Rautenberg in wide eyed red riding hood mode.
Samantha Meisner gives solid support as Giulia, even as her character falters in frustration in the face of she and Carlo losing their foundation.
Benjamin Winckle as Carlo brings a robust, rustic reasonableness, totally convincing in his ecological convictions.
And Randa Sayed as Anna is effectively effervescent, energetic, and euphoric; carpe diem personified.
Director Paul Gilchrist says that every piece of theatre is a happy risk, and certainly his creative collaborations with Giorgi have mirrored that observation. The Poor Kitchen played a short season of a working week at Old 505 Theatre, Eliza Street, Newtown, a relatively new space in the devastatingly space strapped Sydney theatre scene. Both venue and production are to be applauded for this happy risk management.
The Poor Kitchen deserves a remount, but in the meantime, Giorgi and Gilchrist, under their subtlenuance banner, are presenting Shut Up and Drive at the Kings Cross Theatre from April 9.
One for the calendar.
subtlenuance and Old 505 FreshWorks present
The Poor Kitchen
by Daniela Giorgi
Directed by Paul Gilchrist
Venue: Old 505 Theatre | 5 Eliza St, Newtown
Dates: 2 – 6 February 2016
Tickets: $33 – $22
Bookings: old505theatre.com
