"COOKING WITH ELVIS," Sang Froid Theatre Company at Athenaeum Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
I saw "Cooking with Elvis" – a dark comedy that features cannibalism among its varied operatic vices – two nights after viewing the Lyric’s "Sweeney Todd." So I’ve had my fill of shows featuring pies stuffed with "gut-wretching" ingredients. But Lee Hall’s "Cooking with Elvis," a modern British farce with dismal undertones, provides heartier grist for the psychological mill.
In this smartly grotesque Chicago premiere, presented by Sang Froid Theatre Company at the Athenaeum Theatre, the disenfranchised characters pent up in a dead-end existence in the North East of England are not mere conduits for shocking audiences. They are certainly overblown examples of the depths to which a desperate humanity can plunge but, it’s in the outlandishness where their genuine spirits abide.
A mere plot summary does not do justice to the play’s weird metaphoric astuteness. But, in short, "Cooking with Elvis" is advanced through Jill, an overweight 14-year-old who cooks obsessively as a way of escaping the devastating disruption of her household. Her father, Dad, was an Elvis impersonator who – while enraged and possibly drunk – crashed his car into a truck and ended up in a vegetative state. Jill cares for him and becomes a chronic finger-waving conscience to Mam, her promiscuous 38-year-old alcoholic and bulemic mother, who sleeps with strange men to fulfill her sexual needs.
When Mam brings home the dim-witted and unsuspecting baker, Stuart, to become her sex slave, their problems escalates into more perverse transgressions than a year’s worth of Jerry Springer. There’s even a live tortoise named Stanley, who meets an end akin to, well, "Titus Andronicus." Occasionally, Dad – via a series of fantasy sequences – rises from his wheelchair and delivers sermons that combine all-American fixations on burgers and donuts with an obsessive search for spiritual renewal.
If all of this sounds too strange and over-the-top to be believed – and some audiences may be turned off by the gross and shameless audacity of the play – it also serves to cut through extreme dysfunction to reach a deeply human soul that craves love and acceptance. Hall – best known as the screenwriter of "Billy Elliot" – pushes the limits to return to the most basic of human needs.
Director Dale Goulding creates a multisensory comedic collage that ultimately can bring a tear to the eye – especially when Dad lip synchs Elvis Presley’s version of "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" to his daughter, and one gets the sense that all these people really crave is a normal family life.
The introductory sequence of Jill’s opening the refrigerator door and lighting a gas burner to Elvis’ "2001 Space Odyssey" Vegas concert theme song brilliantly sets the combined irreverent-reverential tone. Jill’s real-time cooking pulls us deeper into her tempting gastronomic oblivion, later paralleled with Mam’s excessive drinking.
Goulding effectively plays with our perceptions. He casts Jill and Dad more realistically; while the slightly built Stuart is an extreme opposite to the towering and larger-boned Mam, whose weight fixation forces her into bulemia. The visual discrepancy accentuates Mam’s perpetual in-denial state. Even the real tortoise, who charismatically lopes across the stage, has the capacity to elicit more sympathy than the human characters – pointing to a subtle irony of how we sometimes feel more for animals than for humans.
So the playwright – and Gouldings’ exactingly broad staging – leave us with many provocative layers to unpeel. The production’s main flaw, however, is the lack of a consistently absurdist style. At times, the characters are very conscious of their motivations via overblown choreographed gestures that are then sporadically dropped. Jill, of course, forever breaks the fourth wall to remind us we’re watching a play; yet we also witness various hyper-real moments. Also, Elvis’ fantasy monologues could be more clearly delineated.
But, as a whole, Sang Froid’s production succeeds at entwining stomach-churning degradation with cautious possibility. And, perhaps more than any contrived guest on Jerry Springer, it’s easy to empathize with Hall’s seemingly hopeless characters through those "little moments" of truth. When Mam laments the maddening effects of silence to her injured and unresponsive husband, we can understand her ravenous, self-loathing binges. We also can relate to the guilt she feels and her daughter’s frustrations over being different. Everyone is gloriously flawed and, within their flawed admissions, they find, to quote the King, "the strength to carry on."
Thea Emily Nelson delivers the most bristling, unaffected and honest performance as Jill -- the outspoken glue that holds this production together. Her sincerity, which overrides her character’s boiling petulance, shines a light on the whole show. Sean O’Donnell’s hapless Stuart brings an artfully innocent fumbling to a role that essentially represents how – despite his sympathetic nature – Stuart’s oblivion destroys him.
Laura Millett’s Mam unapologetically flings herself over the precipice of absurdist tragedy; and Ben Byer evenly captures the dual ineffectuality and messianic qualities of Dad/Elvis.
Byron Wallace’s leopard- and zebra-tinged plush sets join cheesy with the shoddy emptiness of this working-class house, further enhanced by Sean Mallary’s ironic faux-angelic, spotlight-inspired illumination. Cybele Moon’s wild costumes (especially Elvis’ sequins-precise jumpsuits) and Sandy Morris’ appropriately garish makeup suspend us into a frightening alternate universe that sufficiently shakes up our sensibilities. •
Sang Froid Theatre Company’s production of "Cooking with Elvis" runs through January 11 at the Athenaeum Theatre (third-floor studio), 2936 N. Southport. Tickets: $10-$15. Call 312-902-1500.
