Shorts by Soup Kitchen Theatre, June 30, 1997

Shorts by Soup Kitchen Theatre

Athenaeum II until July 11, 1997 At

12.10 & 1.10pm Mon-Fri

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around June 29, 1997

Does your lunch hour usually consist of jogging elbows while ordering a $10 gourmet sandwich or rushing out to buy a birthday gift at David Jones? For a change, try snack-size lunchtime theatre.

For $5 Soup Kitchen Theatre provides soup, (Rosella) bread (Pott's) and five quick, light sketch pieces. You are fed, entertained and out of there in well under an hour if you need to get back to the desk job. There is no stress, no noise and no hustle and bustle of the city at midday.

The strongest piece of writing is Igloo, a lyrical, romantic and witty monologue by Elizabeth Coleman. A woman (Amanda Armstrong) cleans her teeth and muses on the idyllic image of living in a perfect igloo where all her dreams materialise.

Another smart piece is The Message Routine that is a voiceover cleverly placed to cover the quick set changes. It satirises all those recorded message services that chew up your dollars as you wait for service.

A possibly unintentional theme throughout the pieces is romantic fantasy. Reading Between The Lines by Trudy McLauchlan is a broad comic glance at a woman's immersion in her lunch time reading matter: a Mills and Boon romance and its intrusion into reality.

Abe Pogos's Dream Girl looks at an awkward and heightened moment as a man reveals he has been dreaming about his girlfriend's sister.

Stress Management is the odd piece out being a satire on group therapy sessions. It makes a point about self-indulgent therapy junkies in a final dramatic revelation by the only silent group member.

Directors Lucy Jones and Catherine Hill have kept the style broad and light. The staging is simple, the content light and the performances competent (Steve Adams, Ariane Vrisakis, Drew Tingwell, Amanda Armstrong). At times the writing cries out for a little more depth and less effort on the part of the actors who seem to be pushing too hard with the lines.

However, you can't go wrong for $5 and the audience really enjoyed it. We don't want too much headwork for lunch, do we?

KATE HERBERT