Review: Cooking with Elvis – Live Theatre, Newcastle
The return of Lee Hall’s Cooking with Elvis to the Live Theatre is gut-bustingly hilarious from start to finish.
The Live Theatre has celebrated its fortieth year with some fascinating productions, with Michael Chaplin’s Tyne showcasing some of Live’s former glories, and last month’s comedy-drama Wet House from Paddy Campbell was a pure joy, attracting a range of very positive and well-deserved reviews from the likes of The Guardian and The Stage.
Whereas the comedy in Wet House served to enhance the tragedy, there is little space in Cooking with Elvis for reflection upon the darker issues, as the perfectly crafted and delivered outrageous lines are hurled at an unrelenting pace.
If any play were able to make you sides literally split, then Cooking with Elvis would be the one to transgress the metaphor.
The performances are splendid, naturally, with Joe Caffrey reprising the role as former Elvis impersonator which he filled when the play was first performed at the Live Theatre fifteen years ago.
Tracy Whitwell, who is tasked with handling the play’s moments of pathos, is also fantastic as the troubled wife and mother, with Riley Jones looking suitably bemused in his role as Stuart, who manages to consistently do the wrong thing in a succession of profoundly wrong scenarios.
It’s with no insult to the other three cast members, though, to highlight Victoria Bewick’s superb performance as Jill, whose exasperation escalates in perfect correlation with the increasingly warped situation, wringing out every last drop of humour from even the most innocuous metafiction.
It’s great that audiences have another chance to see Cooking with Elvis in its spiritual home; this beautiful theatre, with a remarkable pedigree that has always displayed, above anything else, that it has one hell of a sense of humour.
Date of live review: Wednesday 23 October 2013
Cooking with Elvis runs at Live Theatre until 23 November 2013. Tickets can be booked online.
