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A
MYSTICAL TALE OF LOSS, LOVE & SOUL-FOOD
Theatre Tours International presents
CHOPPING
CHILLIES
Written & Performed by Clair Whitefield
Directed by Guy Masterson
Newcastle Alphabetti Theatre
Thursday 19th – Saturday 21st
January 7.30pm
A hit at Edinburgh 2016: From Kerala to Camden, an epic, mystical
tale of love, loss and soul-food.
A cobbler and a cook concoct a delicious
transcontinental enchantment as tragedy and chance entwine. Katie dreams of
curries and chapattis; Ajna, of holy souls and reincarnation... A delightful,
poetic, magical yarn that conjoins the spirit of India with the heart
of London.
Directed by Olivier Award winner (for 'Morecambe')
Guy Masterson.
"An
extraordinary, humbling story of love, family, loss, grief, new beginnings and
unexpected friendships. A delicious, appetising, spicy feast of a show!" (EdinburghGude,
2016)
"the
imprint lasts long after the performance ends."
(Three Weeks, 2016)
Tickets:
The
venue is located at
The Basement,
18 New Bridge Street West,
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8AW
(Tip to find the entrance - look for the blue gates
by the NCP car park entrance)
Phone 0191 261 5906
This is a Pay
What You Feel performance. To reserve tickets see website: http://www.alphabettitheatre.co.uk/whats-on-menu/whats-on/17-whats-on-articles/120-chopping-chillies
 |
| The amazing the Curry Rolls serving in the bar during the entire run. |
SOME EDINBURGH 2016 REVIEWS
**** THE LIST 01/09/16
Claire Whitefield's Chopping Chilies first appeared
in 2015's Free Fringe:
A martial artist, suffering grief at the loss of
his family in a tragic accident, inherits a shoe repair shop, moves overseas
and uses his knowledge of the body's pressure points to alter his customer's
footwear, posture, confidence and ultimately their lives. Powerless to repair
his own life, he finds himself challenged only when a young, dreadlocked hipster
opens up a cafe next door, and begins making food that reminds him of his lost
family and the country he left behind.
The play features stories within stories, and a
variety of colourful characters who speak in verse, a nod to Whitefield's
background in poetry. The plot is fast moving, with a dense layer of
foreshadowing and symmetry but the simple premise sweeps up the audience with
its charm.
Perhaps its most intriguing point is the refusal to
become a stereotypical love story, ignoring romance in favour of exploring
ideas about neighbours and friendship. It also looks at how the things people
create influence those that come into contact with them. Leaving the theatre
after Whitefield's energetic performance, you may find yourself looking at your
own shoes and wondering how they are affecting your own course of life. (Graeme
McNee - The List - 01/09/16)
"Higly Recommended" FRINGE
REVIEW 25/08/16
A sohlo show, written and performed by Clair
Whitfield and directed by Guy Masterson, which is a mix of prose and
storytelling, physical theatre and character performance weaving London and
India in a tale of fate, friendship and personal transformation.
This is a tale set mainly in Camden where Ajna, an Indian
martial arts teacher from Kerala, unexpectedly inherits a cobbler's shop due to
the death of an uncle. New to the metropolis Ajna quickly learns the cobbler's
art and sets about trying to help those with whom he comes into contact with by
engineering slithers of insole to work some kind of magic on the meridians in
the feet and thus bring about life changes in the wearer of the repaired shoes.
Katie, the other main character of the piece, open's a pop-up Indian delicatessen
next door and Anja becomes her food taster and adviser on the exacting science
of Keralan food preparation processes and technique. The ensuing friendship, as
well as a number of other minor characters that appear passim, is the main
emotional meat of the piece as they connect to each other in unexpected ways.
As an out-of-towner with a rather traumatic history, Ajna is somewhat
comparable to the lone cowboy of Western movies who, due to his own story, can
never take root in town but nevertheless is a source of transformation for
those around him and is himself transformed.
It is delivered by Whitfield with much gusto and
panache and I found her prose and rhyme to be sophisticated and very pleasing,
and her physical delivery via her postures and quasi-dance enactments was not
overplayed. The delivery was word perfect with not a single slip.
It is an enthralling tale, full of charm and
atmosphere, well executed with great enthusiasm by Whitfield - and a few laughs
along the way too. (Leslie Lane
- FringeReview.com - 25/08/16)
***** EDINBURGH GUIDE 11/08/16
Standing centre stage, Clair Whitefield, wearing a
simple red T shirt and loose blue trousers, begins to tell us an extraordinary,
humbling story of love, family, loss, grief, new beginnings and unexpected
friendships.
From the first line, we are drawn into a
traveller's tale from India to London. We begin on
Parliament Hill in the early morning before the dog walkers arrive; beside the
trees you will observe a Kalari master practicing the sacred martial art, a
ritual of flowing kicks and sticks to represent power, respect and balance.
This is Ajna Jan, who has arrived from Kerala to
take over his late uncle's cobbler's shop in Camden. He has left behind
the colour and chaos, tuk tuks and street vendors to experience the black
tunnel of the Northern Line en route to 75 Camden Street.
But he is no ordinary cobbler, repairing battered
shoes. The kindly, quiet Ajna is a spiritual gentleman who is able to combine
the ancient art of reflexology to refresh and energise the tired souls of his
customers with magical results.
Clair is a masterly mime artist and actress, who,
with graceful movement, brings to life with meticulous detail the various
characters, from lawyers to young lovers, who visit the shop.
Next door, Katy, just back from a gap year in India
has opened her Kerala café - and Ajna is of course quick to offer his expertise
as a taster of her pakoras and samosas; the enticing description of fragrant
coconut, lime, Kashmiri chillies and banana leaves is so pungent you actually
believe that Madhur Jaffrey is sizzling the spices on stage.
Written as a richly imaginative poetry-play, the
lyrical language is reminiscent in its gentle humour and emotional insight of T
S Eliot's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. It is beautifully directed by Guy
Masterson, like a choreographed dance with just sound effects and lighting to
create a real sense of being taken on this journey from Cochin to Camden.
This is storytelling at its most simple and most
enlightening and rather like the memoir and film, Eat Pray Love, explores
issues of nationality, language, faith and culture. Ultimately it is about the
joy of cooking and sharing good food which brings people together, the true
meaning of companionship. Chopping Chillies is a delicious, appetising, spicy
feast of a show. (Vivien Devlin - Edinburgh Guide 11/08/16)
**** TV BOMB
18/08/16
There's no doubt about it, Clair Whitefield is the
Real Thing. A poet-turned-playwright, Chopping Chillies is her first play, and
this is its second outing at the Fringe, having been seen and subsequently
picked up by renowned producer-director, Guy Masterson, in 2015. This polished,
newly-directed production is therefore an amalgamation of Whitefield's passion
and Masterson's experience, and it shows.
The premise is simple enough: We, the audience, are
treated to the gentle unravelling of the unlikely yet compellingly believable
tale of Ajna Jan, a martial arts Master in Kerala, who becomes a cobbler in Camden following the death
of his family. Next door to his little shop, a young woman named Katie opens an
Indian restaurant and, while Ajna is helping strangers through pressure points
on the soles of their shoes, he also helps Katie, more overtly, with the 'soul'
of her food. This is no contrived love affair, but a low-key, organic
friendship as panacea to pain. Rarely has a character's journey been related
with such subtlety *and* pathos.
Alone on the practically bare stage, Whitefield
plays all the parts, beginning with Ajna himself. At times, she immerses
herself fully into the here and now of the story, so that we are incontrovertibly
transported to that moment through Whitefield's voice, her mannerisms, her very
body. At others, she is the narrator, reverting to the third person and the
past tense, which controverts the standard format of a 'play', and yet serves
as counterpoint to the 'present' scenes, pushing them into vivid relief,
wherein all the senses waken. We can smell Katie's spices, and we can taste her
chillies. As for Ajna Jan, we can taste his tears.
It is difficult to determine whether Chopping
Chillies truly challenges the boundaries of theatre-writing, or whether it is
simply a more theatrical presentation of a piece of beautiful prose. Whitefield
herself calls it a 'poetry-play', and her performance poetry origins are
certainly in evidence. However, Masterson states in the programme notes that,
"Great theatre should be a tempest of energy, illuminated by flashes of
blinding communication" and "it should be an experience that no other
medium can provide". The former description encapsulates this performance
perfectly and, whilst the script would no doubt work well enough on the radio
or printed in a book, there is no substitution for the live experience of
witnessing - and sharing - this tale around a stage. It is, after all, our
modern equivalent of the campfire.
Whitefield is undoubtedly an accomplished wordsmith
of lyrical sensibilities, and ultimately, her pairing with Masterson is a hit.
Together, they convey the universal power of storytelling with a feather-light
touch, which nevertheless hits home when it needs to. However, a huge part of
the magic comes from Whitefield herself. She is a performer of unconscious but
captivating charm. Chopping Chillies is a thoroughly engrossing way to spend an
hour. (Laura Ingram - TV Bomb 18/08/16)
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