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This show is nuts!Summary
Rating
Excellent
Aggi (Caitlin Hill) and Frederick (Peter Wood) are best friends, bonding over abusive ex-partners and a love of binge eating. Like most millennials, they suffer from social anxiety, struggling to establish interpersonal relationships that don’t involve the use of a keyboard.
A look into Aggi’s past tells us that she has a tendency to morph in order to please the boys she falls in love with. Once, she even started attending church to impress a Christian guy. Frederick, instead, has a bumpy relationship with his body and keeps receiving rejections for not being skinny enough. In different ways they both have low self-esteem, which subconsciously allows people they only know superficially to be overcritical and feed their insecurities.
Hill and Wood’s upbeat performance ranges from dance to comedy, catering for a bubbly hour of entertainment. The pace is fast, the pattern unpredictable and a tiny bit of audience engagement goes a long way. By the time we’re dismissed, my jaw hurts from too much laughter.
There’s some sort of clownesque undertone that runs within this piece. Serving the ridicule with a dark twist, the actors make fun of each other, unexpectedly throwing some serious notes into the mix. The bleak truth of how we let our sense of self-worth be endangered at the hand of others resonates long after the show is over.
Boys Taste Better with Nutella is a playful encouragement to all of us to enjoy life with friends, leaving behind all those lowlifes who talk us down. Cheesy pop tunes and showers of McDonald’s fries are a side dish to lots and lots of Nutella. Melbourne-based Hill and Wood are nuts and how we all made it out of the auditorium in presentable conditions remains a mystery.
Co-Directors: Kristen Maloney, Caitlin Hill and Peter Wood
Producer: Backyard Theatre Collective
Booking Information: This show has completed its current run.
