Review: HUNGRY, Soho Theatre

"I thought I was being romantic, but I'm just being drunk and gay". Everything changes when Bex starts serving at Lori's catering company. Lori is a polished high-end chef enamoured of food and what it can give people, Bex is a young working-class woman whose go-to meal is chicken nuggets. Can Lori's pretentious palate fit within Bex's realistic views of the world?

Playwright Chris Bush bookends a down-to-earth relationship, intertwining a meet-cute kick-off and painful fall-out to uncover internalised and systemic racism. The crisp, snappy dialogue is peppered with acute observational one-liners and unwavering social awareness, reconfirming Bush as one of our greatest, most relevant contemporary playwrights.

Katie Posner directs Eleanor Sutton as Lori and Melissa Lowe as Bex in this heartbreakingly real play by Paines Plough. The two characters are the gateway to an empathetic and meticulous exploration of food, our ties to it, and the effects of gentrification on tradition and culture.

While their attraction is adorable, it becomes immediately clear that they share very little and neither of them is ultimately able to be there in the way the other needs. While the balance is askew from the outset - Lori is the owner, Bex the employee - it's Lori's ingrained system of beliefs, her inability to empathise with Bex's perspective, and her blindness to experiences that are different from hers that break them apart.

Bex is casually cruel in her grief, but Lori can't breach the distance between them. Food is beauty and progress for Lori, but it's comfort and sustenance for Bex. The piece shines a spotlight on the societal judgement attributed to eating and the shame that comes from it, with Lowe's Bex delivering an earthquake of a monologue that crowns an enthralling, touching, thoroughly consuming performance.

She shatters Lori's worldview and finally addresses the ugly truth that lies underneath their partnership. She explores the emotional connection we have with certain dishes, bringing into question culinary colonialism and Lori's belief that she can "elevate" multicultural cuisines .

Sutton simmers down from a bumbling, adoring girlfriend to a scorned woman who's going for blood. Her effusive chattiness turns into nasty insults and reveals a disdain for Bex's lack of enterprise (or, at least, what she deems so). Her behaviour is, in essence, watered down imperialism, hiding behind a mission to improve Bex's life by homogenising it to bring her up to her level.

The actor is masterful at unmasking her character's stance on Bex's upbringing without coming out as an established racist. Bush touches on élitism and classism in eating habits too. The script is precise in its stand, but the writer conceals it in the implications of her characters' conduct. It's brilliant writing.

Posner's direction compliments the material with a delicate yet strong touch. While setting the action in the round dictates a few artificial movements from the cast, it places them in a fishbowl of sorts, available to the audience to break apart and analyse from every angle.

Lights tremble when the couple's fractures see the open air in Rajiv Pattan's design. It's a bit on the nose, but works well in its foreboding and eerie suggestions. Two professional kitchen trolleys with steel cloches and a few tools are the only props, cold and surgical in their skeletal look. They divide and unite Lowe and Sutton, who move them around with purpose and resolution.

Ultimately, Hungry is a sad reminder of all the work we as a society still need to do. A meal from McDonald's is less expensive than any healthier option, and the cost of living is getting higher every other week. Racism is rife in all white-dominated areas and it's down to the new generations to make a lasting change. "My life is shit because the system is shit" Bex says. Hard agree.

Hungry runs at Soho Theatre until 30 July.

Photo Credit: The Other Richard

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