How did Elizabeth and Marisa decide on the Wicked Cafe and these four wicked and delectable stories you ask? It all started last year after Elizabeth had her first Fringe experience and ran to Marisa without an idea in her head. Their show, whatever it was destined to be, was going to be wicked. They planned and planned like the all star chefs on reality TV shows, but when their first choice venue fell through, the Fringe staff came to the rescue like any good sous chef. The Wicked Cafe, the Fringe suggested, was eager to be a venue and they knew well that an eager venue close to the island was the base of any good recipe. And of course the cafe name lent itself as the perfect inspiration for their title.
Photography by Bettina Strauss Where do you find the best ingredients? Locally, of course. Marisa dove into her memory and remembered being swept away by a show, by local playwright, Kathleen Oliver. Rendez-Vous, the story of a fancy French restaurant waiter,
who struggles with wanting nothing more than to give advice to the date night couples
he sees,
was a perfect fit for their cafe setting. It also offered a wonderful balancing of flavours to
Brebner's sometimes hysterical spicing. However, two shows wasn't quite enough, they still needed to find those perfect pairings. What better way to
find them, than to ask the emerging playwrights of
their community to create a full buffet of mouth watering stories to
choose from. They sent out a call for submissions and twenty-two fell onto their plate. Christopher Cook's new
play You'll Probably Come Back, halted them in their
search and made them contemplate the finer, more subtle ingredients
of life. And Monsters in the Closet by Seth
Soulstein was that magical, hard to find,
ever so special ingredient that made them howl with laughter. All ingredients for a one wicked show, found. |