Angela's Kitchen
ANGELA’S KITCHEN, SBW Stables Theatre-Griffin Theatre Company, 5 November-18 December 2010.
PAUL CAPSIS is an extraordinary talent and he is the creative force behind an extraordinary show. Like millions of Australians, the Capsis family came here from somewhere else, on a boat and for reasons of extreme need, all of which he explores and lovingly reveals in Angela’s Kitchen
The tiny island nation of Malta, in the Mediterranean, has suffered more than most over the millennia because of its strategic position – in the middle between warring cultures and competing global interests. Just what this means in human terms is brought vividly to life in Paul Capsis’s beautiful autobiographical performance piece, Angela’s Kitchen.
His grandmother – Angela – lived through WW2 and the aerial bombing of the island that gave it the horrific honour of being the most bombed place on earth at that time. As Capsis relates, during a particularly torrid two-month period in the 1940s, Malta was bombed every night but one. It is unimaginable. Yet he produces a wry laugh by describing the crucial difference between German bombing and Italian bombing – you’ll have to go and see it to find out exactly what it was.
The Australian branch of the Capsis family – headed by matriarch-in-waiting Angela and her five children – arrived in Australia in 1948 to join wharfie husband and father who had gone ahead. They settled in Surry Hills, where eventually Paul was born and brought up: a strange little wog boy who was odd even to his extended family. He describes his childhood in delicate and poignant detail and, in the momentary softening of his expressive face, becomes the lonely little weirdo who played with leaves and talked to imaginary friends; and all the time he watched: observing his aunts, uncles, the neighbours and life in the rough inner city.
Wisely, Capsis enlisted director Julian Meyrick and playwright Hilary Bell as his co-writers and collaborators on the script; as a result it hums with life, authenticity, poetry and a succinct, unsentimental, but deeply loving voice. Although specific to one family, one time and one place, Angela’s Kitchen is a classically universal story of growing up, displacement, love, fear, dreams and tragedies; in other words – life as it’s lived by many of us, but rarely discussed or depicted.
Designer Louise McCarthy, with composer/sound designer Alister Spence and lighting designer Verity Hampson contribute enormously to the success of the show with a seemingly simple set that is actually as complex and well thought out as a Rubik’s cube. What happens with a kitchen table and kitchen cabinet is amazing to see and funny when not affecting as the implications of the various uses become clear.
Angela’s influence on her grandson was life changing and life enhancing for him and now – through the immortality he has given her in this paean to a bittersweet life – she enhances ours too. It’s a beautiful gift all round and one to be savoured. Laugh and cry and be totally entertained and gripped as, one by one, you meet the residents of pre-posh Surry Hills – grumpy granddad, squinty-eyed chain smoking aunty, lugubrious bingo caller, lemon-lipped ladies and all. It’s a delight.
