CUT CHILLI

By Diana Simmonds

July 22 2024

CUT CHILLI, New Ghosts at the Old Fitz, 5-27 July 2024. Photography by Phil Erbacher: Susie Lindeman, Ariyan Sharma, Kelsey Jeanell, Noel Hodda and Brendan Miles

Producing a new play from a new writer is a perilously risky undertaking, especially for an independent company in its first season, but Cut Chilli by Melbourne playwright Chenturan Aran is a well-chosen exception. It comes with the program note revealing that it’s been in development since 2022 through La Boite, Australian Plays Transform and Melbourne Theatre Company’s Cybec Electric reading series – when its title was the less mystifying but clunky With A Side Of Cut Chilli.

All that effort has paid off: Cut Chilli is one of the most accomplished, meaningful and entertaining Australian plays of recent years. It’s a wise-cracking, one-liner-laced comedy about abandoned babies, the international adoption business, the life-draining effects of social media, fraud, fear and loss. And it’s a wickedly funny and heartwrenching 110 minutes.

Cut Chilli opens at a smart new Indian fusion restaurant where sunny Jamie (Ariyan Sharma) and his more cynical girlfriend Zahra (Kelsey Jeanell) find “Kerala Kangaroo” on the menu. The maitre d’ (Brendan Miles in quasi-Sub-Continent garb) is all “Namaste” and patronising bonhomie. This peppery mix of laughter, racist insults and petty snobbery gets the evening off to a cracking start.

At the end of a semester, Jamie is going home to Mandurah WA with Zahra. His adoptive parents Katherine (Susie Lindeman) and Lee (Brendan Miles) Mackenzie can’t wait to see him. Lee’s comically incorrect brother Jeff (Noel Hodda) is also on hand to greet his nephew. Zahra’s ancestry is Trinidad & Tobago (“Which one?” Asks Jeff) and she’s Muslim (Lee rolls out a rug for her prayers). She’s also an obnoxious podcaster whose mic is like a heat-seeking missile for new victims. She doesn’t buy Jamie’s warm and fuzzy life story of being an abandoned baby rescued from war-torn Sri Lanka by Katherine, and she plants the first seeds of doubt in his mind.

The set design (Soham Apte) is a set of vertical scrim panels on which is projected a tranquil sea- and beach-scape that could be either edge of the Indian Ocean. A voice-over (Nikki Sekar) relates deceptively serene Sri Lankan myths – simultaneously translated as surtitles over the rolling wavelets (sound design Sam Cheng). When the action moves to the Mackenzie home, the panels are drawn aside to form the living-dining room. It’s elegantly simple, as is the lighting (Isobel Morrissey) and is a duplicitously comfortable setting for the life-wrecking to come.

With director David Burrowes steering the accomplished ensemble, an unexpected tragedy gradually emerges from the almost constant wisecracks. It’s a beguiling mixture and is led by a fabulously subtle performance from Susie Lindeman as the tastefully inebriated Katherine. She adores her son and when he comes home demanding to see his “adoption file”, she’s devastated.

Meanwhile, Zahra and Lee Mackenzie unknowingly vie with one another to be the most odious with their recording devices. As she incessantly trawls for soundbites, he’s the local pollie campaigning for higher office through a heartwarming family vid captured on his phone. (Droll parallels with ABC TV’s Austin.) And while he’s the innocent in the mix and hurting, Jamie isn’t immune from being disagreeable, as his golden Kurta and attitude prove (characterful costumes by Rita Naidu).

That there’ll be tears before bedtime is a given, but how they’re provoked and what happens afterwards is neither straightforward nor easily predictable. Fairly safe to say, however, that Chenturan Aran is a talent to be savoured and encouraged. Fresh out of their drama schools, Ariyan Sharma and Kelsey Jeanell are also stand-outs, and Susie Lindeman is remarkable.

If you can beg, borrow or nick a ticket – do it. Recommended without reservation.