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Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

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The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...

Chop it up: Chef @Sohotheatre


One woman’s descent from a haute-cuisine head-chef to convicted inmate provides for some mouth watering entertainment in Sabrina Mahfouz’s Chef at the Soho Theatre. While it is not necessarily an unexpected journey, it provides enough interest for its short duration to make you wish you were not watching it on an empty stomach.

It all starts with a peach. With the simplest of ingredients,  Jade Anouka takes us through a range of courses that track her culinary career and the events that lead to her ending up in jail.

Food as her passion comes out more strongly in this piece than the stories of her troubled teenage years, domestic life and the need to keep things level while behind bars. The dialogue is so evocative of food, its preparation and presentation that it is bound to make you hungry.


There are also some smart witty lines in it: “The night is packed away into a black bin bag, tagged with a let’s not talk of that again, tomorrow will be better and maybe we should just get pizza.”

But you get the sense (particularly if you have ever watched any episodes of Orange is the New Black), that the troubled backdrop to extraordinary talented person behind bars has been covered more successfully elsewhere. And the shortness of the piece does not give it much time to delve deeply into anything.

Anouka is engaging throughout the piece as the cook with issues, and with a passion. And as a monologue and meditation on life choices and making art out of everyday activities it is fascinating.

It is a sparse production, with just a whiteboard covering the menu and the issues du jour and a stainless steel bench. But it is effective.

Chef was winner of an Edinburgh Fringe First 2014 and The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence. It is directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward and runs upstairs at the Soho Theatre until 4 July.

⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

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