"This careful recipe for disaster winds up feeling as overcooked as the roast that’s drying up in the oven throughout the show. Ms. Langrishe has the hard-smiling domestic diva persona down cold. And Caroline’s rare moments of stricken, wondering silence — when self-knowledge seems to be whispering in her ear — are the production’s most poignant, and the funniest. Mostly, though, it’s hard to care about these damned souls."
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"Either the worst domestic dramedy ever written, or a brilliant satire of the genre...The crash-and-burn can be great fun to watch, but it takes a lot of strenuous contrivance to get there...Whatley directs the cast like he's conducting a locomotive to hell, with the acceleration of line delivery compensating for the lack of organic tension in the script. It's like a 1970s farce...Still, 90 minutes of this so-bad-it's-good episode of Disasterpiece Theatre left me wiping away tears of laughter."
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"Torben Betts' play is something of a twofer, being both a grating, laughless farce and a failed example of that British theatre favorite, the state-of-the-nation play...Since all of the characters are one-note nags, there is little that the cast can do...Otherwise, the best thing to be said about Alastair Whatley's direction is that it keeps things hustling along."
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"There may be moments that amuse, but at the price of a serious hangover...There are perhaps another half dozen plot threads that show up and lead nowhere...To their credit, Ms. Langrishe, Mr. Gillett, and Ms. Banks give it their all by frenetically playing things up as if they were appearing in an actual well-constructed farce, and there is no faulting their timing under Whatley's direction. But, to quote Mme Armfeldt from "A Little Night Music," Where is style? Where is skill?"
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“It’s a comedy...Betts’ play is one of those Alan Ayckbourn sort of rueful British comedies where a bunch of self-absorbed individuals blithely stumble over each other’s personal follies...A neatly-written piece that is capably performed...Whatley ably stages the play upon a rather blandly-designed setting, where his adept actors do their best to make a satisfying meal out of their clashing characters. Perhaps you’ll find this show to be a tastier morsel than I did.”
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"Torben Betts' 'Caroline's Kitchen' has all the elements for a wonderful farce with serious overtones. However, as seen in Alastair Whatley's production for the Original Theatre Company and Ghost Light Theatre production, it feels tiresomely long and labored in its attempt to bring down the roof on a group of egotistical modern Englishmen and women at work and play in contemporary Britain."
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"Torben Betts has taken British Farce and put it a crash diet of steroids. Not a good idea for any of us...Betts has thrown everything into this stew without discriminating. And unlike a good old farce there is no unraveling of story paths that will surprise or delight because we see everything coming a mile away, drip by drip...The cast has little chance to craft much of a performance and instead spend their time gasping and mugging from point A to point B and back again."
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"Unfortunately, even with some good ingredients here and there adding moments of flavor and giggles, this soufflé collapses in on itself, giving us not much to laugh about or bite into...As this is English farce, be prepared for that to boil over into everything and onto everyone with abundance. I just wish it was done with a stronger order of character and intention...There isn’t one character that feels emotionally authentic or one you want to get behind, or even like really."
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