Review: Biscuits for Breakfast, The Courtyard Theatre

I’ll be honest, Biscuits for Breakfast sounds like the kind of thing I might suggest to myself when my willpower to stay on my diet has disappeared.

Thankfully, this engaging play by Gareth Farr has a far more interesting premise. At its heart, it is a simple love story following two young people whose upbringings have damaged them. Woven into this is the idea that in today’s society it is all too easy to fall into crippling food poverty. The play brings this difficulty to life in a way that is deeply uncomfortable because it is searingly realistic, but in doing so also explores how we all react differently to the challenges that life can throw at us.

What works particularly well is that despite the seriousness of the subject matter, the audience are not patronised and the central ideas are explored in a way that allows storytelling to be prioritised over information-giving. The end result is that you come away with a very real understanding of the human impact of food poverty.

Consequently, this substantial 90-minute show from Kaleidoscope Collective Arts feels remarkably authentic. Director Georgia Grace Gavin keeps things moving at a considerable pace over what is quite a lengthy timeline. This works well with Sabina Pieroni‘s set, which, despite occupying a very small stage, makes thoughtful use of the play’s locations and themes to provide variation and interest without ever feeling cluttered. It proves that you can do a lot with very little.

The heart of the play belongs to the two characters of Joanne (Charity Muiruri) and Paul (Velizar Nikolov). A third character, Paul’s dad (Paul Pariser), is voiced off stage through cassette tape recordings, and these are intended to flesh out the history of Paul, his trauma, and to give us an understanding of why he reacts as he does towards the play’s climax. Whilst this provides greater texture to the staging, and an interesting third voice in what is essentially a two-hander, it also restricts Nikolov’s opportunity to express his character’s development through his own lines.

On the other hand, Muiruri’s Joanne has more than enough range to compensate for this imbalance. She is at turns feisty, difficult, tender and thought-provoking. I feel that Farr has a much clearer idea of who this character is than he does with Paul. Muiruri’s performance is outstanding, but she has, by some distance, the better material.

Nevertheless, this makes for an engaging and compelling 90-minute play which only becomes slightly unstuck once the significance of the tape recordings comes into play towards the climax and a rather convenient resolution plays out in the finale.

Despite the bravado and humour elsewhere, the play’s defining moment comes when both central characters are suffering from deep and debilitating hunger. Here the production strips away almost everything else, and it is to Muiruri and Nikolov’s considerable credit that the sense of desolation at this critical point is palpable.

As the first production from Kaleidoscope Collective Arts, Biscuits for Breakfast is a slightly uneven but impressively ambitious piece of theatre. Not every element of Farr’s text is equally convincing, and Paul deserves some of the complexity afforded to Joanne, but its exploration of poverty, resilience and the different ways people respond to hardship is presented in an original, sensitive and captivating way.

Written by Gareth Farr
Directed & Produced by Georgia Grace Gavin
Co-produced by Jon-Luke Goodman
Production Management by David Henry Mardon
Stage Management and Show Operation by Alex Williams
Assistant Stage Management & Set Construction by Izzy Walters
Sound Design by Alexander Tonkiss
Lighting Design by Daniel Yazdani
Set, Costume & Graphic Design by Sabina Pieroni
Assistant Set Design by Chakriya Chhout

Biscuits for Breakfast runs at The Courtyard Theatre as part of Camden Fringe until Tuesday 11 August.