Review: The Kitchen - Slow Cooker

The Kitchen
by Roysten Abel
Can & Abel Theatre
Auckland Arts Festival
Skycity theatre
March 14

Mandakini Goswami and Dilip Shankar would probably make it big on Masterchef. The two cooks who appear in The Kitchen, never got flustered, never cried, never made mistakes and knew exactly what they were doing.

The two of them performed for just over an hour cooking paal payasam, a traditional rice pudding with cardamom and at the end of the show the audience was invited to have a cup of the sweet concoction.

The pair cooked side by side, mirroring each other’s actions in pouring in the ghee, rice, milk and other ingredients. At times they seemed distant from each other while at other times there was an aggressiveness and then there would be a comfortable companionship.  The two of them seemed to use the process of pouring, blending and stirring as some sort of metaphor for their relationship.

Each step of the cooking was taken seriously and carefully. It may be that they are merely mixing the ingredients but the two of them make it seem as though they are following not just a recipe but a ritual akin to a Japanese tea ceremony.

Accompanying the pudding makers were 12 drummers all playing a traditional instrument, the mizhahu. It’s a simple single sound instrument but in the hands of a master drummer it can produce a thunder clap when hit with the palm of the hand or the sound of a gentle zephyr if played with the tips of the fingers.

The drumming started, with a solo drummer producing a single repeated sound and then, progressively, more drummers joined i,n creating more and more complex sound.

At times the repeated drumming, the endless stirring and the lack of narrative appears to be repetitive and even pointless but them the concepts of relaxation, meditation and the simple concentration of seeing, smelling listening, of slowing down and being part of the ritual begin to make sense as the audience becomes part of the performance, which is reinforced at the end by the communal sharing of the rice pudding ion the foyer.