★★★✰✰
I cannot recall a play that has made me feel hungrier than Gareth Farr’s Biscuits for Breakfast at the Hampstead Theatre. The play puts its two characters, Paul and Joanne, through the brutal, relentless wringer of the British poverty cycle with little mercy. Becoming intensely broke after the closure of the hotel where they both once worked, a chef and a maid, Paul and Joanne, each arrive at rock bottom from differing positions of privilege and class. Paul, who is white, grew up with a loving family and a father who passed on his love of cooking. He has a hard time accepting that he is now extremely poor, and allows Joanne to overwork herself while he refuses to settle for a job at a garlic bread factory. Joanne, who grew up in foster care, is a woman of colour, and has a more pragmatic ‘just crack on’ attitude towards her own poverty. It’s an intriguing portrayal of how privilege affects perception, yet the writing is missing nuance within the characters, with scenes that go on and on in endless repetition.
The play begins awkwardly, with a tape recorder playing an old conversation wherein Paul and his father discuss cooking. The two characters then meet in a club, where Paul refuses to take repeated ‘no’s’ for an answer. Actions are punctuated with a movement language that includes simultaneous inhales and choreographed set moving. It feels a bit maladroit, though the minimalism does suit the form of a two-actor play.
Both actors, Ben Castle-Gibb and Boadicea Ricketts, are generous and energetic performers. Ricketts, in particular, stands out as an absolute powerhouse, as committed and fearless as her character, Joanne. The character of Paul, on the other hand, is a more difficult one. He is immensely unlikable, and the saccharine backstory of his father sharing his love for cooking with him unfortunately does not redeem him. He is a negligent and emotionally abusive partner to Joanne (going so far as to nearly strike her in one scene), which is extremely hard to overlook or forgive from an audience perspective.
In the end, the two end up together with a baby on the way, and all is forgiven. The tone is one of a classically heteronormative happy ending, yet it feels like a tragic ending for Joanne, who is exponentially more competent and self-aware than Paul. It feels a little out of nowhere that this should be a love story, since the chemistry between the two characters is little to be desired.
Where this play shines is in its demonstration of the poverty cycle, and how precariously those close to the poverty line live. It is a slow burn, a gradual descent into desperation, anxiety, and of course, hunger. The performers brilliantly pace themselves along with the writing, as their desperation gradually grows deeper throughout the play. The writing is visceral in its story-telling, and though there is an imbalance in the humanity of the two characters, it brings up extremely relevant and under-sung issues regarding food inequality.
Words by Talia Kracauer
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