Robert Taylor

Someone has been terribly clever. That’s what you’ll think moments after the show begins. The Real Inspector Hound, a farce written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Steve Hill, asserts that fiction is make believe and anything goes. There’s a double-meaning to most parts, like a drawing which is both a representation of a real thing as well as a pattern on the page.

Part of the job of a work of art is to startle the viewer, to jostle her/his expectations in some way—often, but not necessarily, unpleasantly—to do something new and fresh. Many people who write reviews, or those who burble about a performance just seen, convey their impressions of the work by detailing what happened, not how it made them feel—in other words, they diminish the power of the storyline to surprise the viewer. In my view, every creater should get her/his moment in the sun. For this reason before I see a new work, I usually shun speculation and limit myself to the first sentence and last paragraph of reviews and publicity announcements.

In spite of these habits it’s almost impossible to bring a truly open-minded perspective, so I had expectations for Kitchen Witches—what do you expect from a comedy whose playbill illustrates a chef wearing her mixing bowl with contents as a hat? Camp jokes?

Kitchen Witches, written by Caroline Smith and directed by Robert Taylor, concerns two friends who aren’t, anymore. These historically rancorous celebrity chefs (should that be chèves?) must work a televised show together.

There’s one advantage to being nescient about theatre and film; I don’t know what to expect. However, considering the cast, I predicted The Petrified Forest, written by Robert E. Sherwood and directed by Marti Baer, would be a musical comedy.

Need a laugh or two? There are lots of reasons to go to the theatre—it gets you out of the house, gets you talking to other humans about something non-work-related—but the biggest benefit comes when the play is a hoot, the actors are having a blast, and the whole experience is, well, uplifting and downright silly.

This rehearsal proved conclusively that I should stop going to rehearsals. Watching this play before it was ready for Opening Night (in order to write this review for you), I can no longer have a pristine reaction to the play when it is ready for prime time. It’s a shame because I bet, in a few days, the play will be even better.

This is going to be an extremely funny play. A play one wants to see many times. Book a seat early in the play’s schedule, so you too can see it again.