Eat Your Heart Out
Two haute bourgeoise sisters meet for lunch every Tuesday at a ‘fine dining’ restaurant. Usually, they would discuss the minutiae of their lives, complain about their husbands or their hairdressers or their health, or the state of the world hors de combat. There is even a reference to Sondheim’s ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ but here it’s minus the corrosive, angry irony of that song.
On this Tuesday, this luncheon, however, things are a little different for the sisters: their mother has just died… Not that either one of them is too distressed about that per se. Neither was that fond of… Joyce. They can hardly bear to name her.
Eleanor (Carolyn Bock), in patterned kaftan, is the more pragmatic, realistic and grounded of the pair, but Beatrice (Helen Hopkins), in all white trouser suit, has been thrown into a bit of a spin and begun to question the meaning of life.
Angela Buckingham’s text is witty and literate, actually asking some serious questions even while satirising those who ask them – or the way they ask them. The intended black comedy, however, is rather undercut by the way Bock and Hopkins deliver their characters – or have been directed by Peter Houghton to deliver their characters. They push much too hard – almost bullying - at trying to make us laugh.
Well, that is the style they have chosen, but for me they make the mistake – surprising for these two skilled, experienced performers - of acting in the full awareness that they are in a comedy – so therefore be funny. No. Eleanor and Beatrice are already on the edge of ridiculous – not to say caricatures – but Bock and Hopkins don’t play the sisters like two sisters unaware of how insulated and privileged and ridiculous they are – which would be funny. Here, they start the way the way they’ll go on: both of them very loud, virtually shouting – Hopkins becomes shrill – and it’s all one note. It’s wearying and it leaves them nowhere to which to build – so that when, finally, Hopkins’ Beatrice abandons restraint and ‘breaks’ the rules’ it’s no departure, no climactic breakout. In fact, it’s a bit embarrassing…
The real and wonderful comedy comes from the restaurant’s Waitperson (Clare Bartholomew). She is brilliant. A natural clown/comedian. We see her resignedly clean up after previous diners and we see her do her best to please the sisters – who treat her as such people do. And there are many other (unseen) customers for her to attend to, so she is never at rest.
Bartholomew does not speak (until she does – and sing) – everything is on her face, which registers a private person with her own concerns even while being tired out, ignored and harassed, overworked, dismayed, shocked, and anxious.
Sophie Woodward’s clever set design and Matt Scott’s lighting allow us to see the restaurant’s kitchen where the just as harassed, hit-and-miss chef (Bartholomew again in hat and wig) works to create the supposedly gourmet dishes the sisters order. ‘I told you to hold the paprika!’ The contrast between them and what goes into what they demand is marked.
Here, with Bartholomew’s waitperson and chef, we feel that director Houghton, a fine exponent of dead-pan physical comedy himself, is on firmer ground. All praise to Clare Bartholomew: she is a delight and she got just about all the laughs.
Overall, Eat Your Heart Out is disappointing – not to say dismaying – given the talent gathered together. I shouldn’t say how I would have done it, but I can imagine an approach where these two talented performers, Bock and Hopkins, don’t push it, don’t try so hard, and talk like more or less ‘normal’ sisters, taking themselves oh-so-seriously – and let us see what they are for ourselves.
Michael Brindley
Photographer: Darren Gill
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