[title]
Bloody hell. It’s not often you see a stage slick with the red stuff, but then however adorable its title might be, Mary Laws’s play is a deeply messed up creation. It’s a feminist spin on suburban gothic horror tropes, set in the America she grew up in: a conservative, small-town society where violent tendencies simmer in anodyne kitchens.
Director Steve Marmion’s production throbs to the beat of Taylor Swift's ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, the song where she puts on spike heels to literally bury her reputation as a country and western sweetheart. Similarly, ‘Blueberry Toast’ centres on an increasingly furious housewife, Barb: Gala Gordon (who stars in ‘The Crown’) plays her with a dreamy, breezy energy that subsides into something nastier.
At its core, this story is a battle of wills. Barb makes her husband, Walt, blueberry toast, a breakfast he accidentally asks for. Even in the land of cronuts and cheese steak that's not a real food, but she still whips something up in her highly covetable kitchen (designed by Anthony Lamble). He refuses to eat it. Then they lock into battle, like two furious stags skidding across the floor of an icily perfect suburban kitchen.
Not that Laws’s play leaves any doubt about who’s wearing the antlers. She explores how restrictive gender roles make for endless hypocrisy, and leave room for each partner to trick and gaslight the other: Walt (Gareth David-Lloyd) first seduced Barb with poetry, but now sees any sign of imagination or whimsy in his wife as an excuse to impose fiercely authoritarian man-of-the-house rule. And Barb manipulates Walt with carefully-timed displays of affection, then deliberately goads him to new heights of macho fury.
Their kids break up these circular, unsettling rows with weird little scenes from a play they’ve written. Adrianna Bertola is compulsively watchable as Jill, a giggling kid who’s gradually schooled by her brother Jack into accepting that she’s unlovable. And Jack becomes a terrifying auteur director, more interested in his creative vision than he is in a family that’s sinking into a sticky, dysfunctional mess.
This extra layer gives ‘Blueberry Toast’ its bite. It’s a play that’s all about the narratives we spin around who we are, about how we choose to live. And as Marmion’s calculatedly nasty production speeds to an end, everyone’s got blood on their hands.
Director Steve Marmion’s production throbs to the beat of Taylor Swift's ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, the song where she puts on spike heels to literally bury her reputation as a country and western sweetheart. Similarly, ‘Blueberry Toast’ centres on an increasingly furious housewife, Barb: Gala Gordon (who stars in ‘The Crown’) plays her with a dreamy, breezy energy that subsides into something nastier.
At its core, this story is a battle of wills. Barb makes her husband, Walt, blueberry toast, a breakfast he accidentally asks for. Even in the land of cronuts and cheese steak that's not a real food, but she still whips something up in her highly covetable kitchen (designed by Anthony Lamble). He refuses to eat it. Then they lock into battle, like two furious stags skidding across the floor of an icily perfect suburban kitchen.
Not that Laws’s play leaves any doubt about who’s wearing the antlers. She explores how restrictive gender roles make for endless hypocrisy, and leave room for each partner to trick and gaslight the other: Walt (Gareth David-Lloyd) first seduced Barb with poetry, but now sees any sign of imagination or whimsy in his wife as an excuse to impose fiercely authoritarian man-of-the-house rule. And Barb manipulates Walt with carefully-timed displays of affection, then deliberately goads him to new heights of macho fury.
Their kids break up these circular, unsettling rows with weird little scenes from a play they’ve written. Adrianna Bertola is compulsively watchable as Jill, a giggling kid who’s gradually schooled by her brother Jack into accepting that she’s unlovable. And Jack becomes a terrifying auteur director, more interested in his creative vision than he is in a family that’s sinking into a sticky, dysfunctional mess.
This extra layer gives ‘Blueberry Toast’ its bite. It’s a play that’s all about the narratives we spin around who we are, about how we choose to live. And as Marmion’s calculatedly nasty production speeds to an end, everyone’s got blood on their hands.