Sydney Reviews

Sniffing out a great time in the theatre is easy when you have a play written by Mary Rachel Brown and Jamie Oxenbould, directed by Mary Rachel Brown, and starring Mandy Bishop and Jamie Oxenbould.

With Chicken in a Biscuit, these three theatricals thrust us into an anthropomorphous arena of philosophical fidos, frisky felines, demented dentists, canonised canines and bunny pot-boiling.

“To make sense of life and dreams in canine terms, one makes sense of scents”, lectures the venerable chocolate Labrador, Truffles, at the start of the show, as he uses his olfactory skills to appraise the front row audience. The play then presents a series of vignettes that cunningly thread together a genuinely hilarious and often poignant narrative.

Oxenbould leads with Truffles and then presents two two legged characters, a dentist who goes down a rabbit hole of taboo desire and the grieving owner of a pug called Paisley, presenting a bizarre eulogy for the dearly departed.

Bishop captivates in blue catsuit as Burmese blue Zintra, entitled pedigree fallen from her pedestal of privilege after the death of her previous “old queen” owner to be fostered by a frumpy, dentist fantasising cat lady.

Morphing from feline to canine, Bishop trades slink for boisterous bark in a dogged determination to protect her mistress from domestic violence, before appearing as a rescue dog entrepreneur with a no nonsense attitude to pairing people with pets.

To mix menagerie metaphors, in writing, performance and production, Chicken in a Biscuit is the ants pants, the bees knees, the cat’s meow, the cat’s whiskers, the cat’s pyjamas, a doggone delight.

Production designer, Kate Beere’s set conjures a colourful play pen for pets, a fluffy cosy place for paws and claws, with slide show illustrations by Jamie Oxenbould and lighting, sound and AV design by Aron Murray.

Chicken in a Biscuit is a cracker.