‘Quiche’ is a comedy by Frank McHugh.
The tl;dr version is ‘Brilliantly executed laugh out loud comedy with well-placed bittersweet-ness.’
The cast, writing and production are excellent and if you go you’ll have a thoroughly good night.
If you want more…
What do men and women want? They’re after one thing, right? Right…
‘Quiche’ offers two couples (perhaps more) and yet it really shows four people who are alone.
It doesn’t matter how nice you make that flat, how many times you move things around or invite people in or turn up the music; you’re still beating against the walls to feel something, anything that isn’t that awful gulf between you and the person you should be deep inside.
Dinner party etiquette. British social status etiquette. You
congratulate people on the things you don’t think they do as well as you. To
stay charming you admit to the faults in yourself that you don’t think are
faults – just like when recruiters prepare you for interviews.
What do they call it? Owning the space? You walk in and you need to be confident, knowledgeable, talkative and competitive. Fail at this and you are getting ‘being in company’ wrong.
But of course they are getting it wrong. Which is why ‘Quiche’ is hysterically funny. These people are not qualified to be as self-assured as they are. Inwardly disappointed and outwardly crass characters hurtle towards sex – which will probably be quite similar in nature.
To get them there there’s inter-couple and intra-couple bitching. There’s bottomless glasses of wine, well-aimed insults, seething stares, hubris, and mixed reactions to the quiche.
Raging alongside are the coping mechanisms for the disappointment. The pride in the job you’re not really that good at or interested in. The men fist bump over echo-chamber recruitment and marketing wank; the women play career-fulfilment top trumps.
And one woman’s faults are another woman’s man’s strengths. You match your candidates to the roles. ‘Match’ is a relative term in Quiche’s world. You’re crying with laughter – and two emotions are causing that.
It’s farce that makes you pay for it. If there’s a pratfall then you’re going to have to deal with the scars it leaves behind. Sitting in audience land, you find yourself trying to suppress the tail end of your barrel laugh to keep up with a gear change into emotional consequences.
It’s life. Your emotions have to take you through some incredibly extreme heights and depths of ridiculous behaviour before you can start to see yourself – and see problems in your life clearly enough to be able to address them.
Quiche starts with four people who are alone. But that’s definitely not how it ends.
'Quiche' is at the Marlborough Theatre tonight at 19:45 and Saturday 18th July at 14:45 and 19:45
What do they call it? Owning the space? You walk in and you need to be confident, knowledgeable, talkative and competitive. Fail at this and you are getting ‘being in company’ wrong.
But of course they are getting it wrong. Which is why ‘Quiche’ is hysterically funny. These people are not qualified to be as self-assured as they are. Inwardly disappointed and outwardly crass characters hurtle towards sex – which will probably be quite similar in nature.
To get them there there’s inter-couple and intra-couple bitching. There’s bottomless glasses of wine, well-aimed insults, seething stares, hubris, and mixed reactions to the quiche.
Raging alongside are the coping mechanisms for the disappointment. The pride in the job you’re not really that good at or interested in. The men fist bump over echo-chamber recruitment and marketing wank; the women play career-fulfilment top trumps.
And one woman’s faults are another woman’s man’s strengths. You match your candidates to the roles. ‘Match’ is a relative term in Quiche’s world. You’re crying with laughter – and two emotions are causing that.
It’s farce that makes you pay for it. If there’s a pratfall then you’re going to have to deal with the scars it leaves behind. Sitting in audience land, you find yourself trying to suppress the tail end of your barrel laugh to keep up with a gear change into emotional consequences.
It’s life. Your emotions have to take you through some incredibly extreme heights and depths of ridiculous behaviour before you can start to see yourself – and see problems in your life clearly enough to be able to address them.
Quiche starts with four people who are alone. But that’s definitely not how it ends.
'Quiche' is at the Marlborough Theatre tonight at 19:45 and Saturday 18th July at 14:45 and 19:45
Hey. Dude. Yr blog look and read good. About time you had a readership- so get networking. it would be nice if some of us were discovered before we die. X
ReplyDeleteDitto you! We'll share contacts as we make them :)
ReplyDelete