Chef
★★★☆☆ Turbulent
Traverse: Fri 14 Mar 2025
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Sabrina Mahfouz’s Chef, starring Rebecca Benson, plays the Traverse for one night only in a production that crackles with energy and is a showcase for Benson’s solo performance.
Chef premiered at Edinburgh Fringe in 2014, garnering several awards. Director André Agius’s touring revival of the piece for the Ayr Gaiety takes full advantage of Benson’s skill, taking her to emotional extremes in the performance of the character known only as “Chef”
Rebecca Benson in Chef. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Joining Benson onstage is BSL interpreter Yvonne Strain, who is integrated into the performance as one of Chef’s trainees in the prison kitchen where the show takes place. Sasha, who “doesn’t talk much” and only occasionally interacts with Chef, is fully part of her world. Strain brings flair and emotional impact to her role, adding to the overall performance for everyone, not just those who speak BSL.
Mahfouz’s script tackles the reflections of Chef, who has apparently been imprisoned for assisting in her father’s suicide, and is shaken in the aftermath of a violent event in her kitchen. It has many moments of brilliance, masterfully enlivened by Benson, but is too fragmentary to be fully successful. Nonlinear monodrama is trendy, but it’s difficult to pull off. The storytelling of the script is incomplete, with too many dangling ends and unfinished thoughts.
tasting menu
Ellie Wintour’s realistically industrial kitchen set is detailed and serves to flex to the several external locations Chef remembers over the course of the story. The only odd element is the overhead projector on one of the surfaces, which Benson uses to name various dishes throughout the show, which are the projected on the backdrop. The intent seems to be that each episode of her life she relates to the audience is aligned with a dish from her cookbook, a tasting menu of her experiences.
Rebecca Benson in Chef. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Conceptually this is interesting, but the execution doesn’t quite work – to no fault of Benson, who manipulates the titles as smoothly as one can. This is the only projected element in the show, and also the only non-prop technical element Benson controls. Several on-stage work lights, used to define its corners, have the potential to be interacted with if the desire was to create a convention that the performer is in control of technical elements. But this not a concept that has been carried across the production.
Lighting from Peter Small, and the associated copious amounts of haze used in the show, serve to both emulate the environment of a professional kitchen with its smoke and steam, and transport Chef to the locations of her mind and memories.
contemplation on life
Although the script feels incomplete, Chef is worth attending for Benson’s performance alone, to witness her rapid contortions through Chef’s psychological turmoil, and embodying distinctly the other people from her life who pop up along the way.
From the opening beat, when she pulls a perfect peach out from its watery suspension, to her final moment of contemplation on life, as fleeting as the sorbet in her hands, Benson makes the most of everything Mahfouz and Agius have to offer.
Running time: One hour and 15 minutes (no interval).
Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge St EH1 2ED
Friday 14 March 2025
Time: 8pm
Run ended. Details.
Rebecca Benson and Yvonne Strain in Chef. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
ENDS
