Sydney Fringe Festival had an air of magic this year. While it might be the bittersweet fact that our editorial team is creeping towards the sunset of our Vertigo 2025 term, there was something chemical in the warm inner west air: lingering outside venues between audiences gushing about what they’ve just seen, or whatever is to come next.
Guided by a member of staff with hot pink nails and shoes to match her vibrant Sydney Fringe Festival staff uniform, Social Media Director Kimia and Features Editor Zara (are you sick of hearing about us going to shows yet?) found themselves at the Emerging Artists Playhouse (also known as Erskineville Town Hall when outside of Fringe season).
“Which show are you here to see, darlin’?” our new-found neon fairy godmother asked us. The answer? COOKED, a new work, written, produced, directed and starred in by multihyphenate up-and-comers Angel Duggan and Lana Page. The nonlinear 45 minute play is ambitious in its goals; revolving around Logan, played by Duggan; Page’s Jean; and Mum, played by Sally Evans. COOKED has lofty goals on paper, and it hits all of them with flying colours. Described by its creatives as “a play about three women and their tumultuous relationships, as well as their mundane, complicated and poignant lives,” COOKED is hilarious, nuanced, devastating, and so deeply heartfelt. How lovely it is to see a new work that feels so complete, facilitating such a needed conversation on wanting what’s best for your loved ones, and the difficulty that comes along with the incessant holding of that desire.
Held in the intimacy of the Spare Room of the Emerging Artists Playhouse, audiences were immediately immersed in a grounded, ephemeral home. Transformed by sound, lighting, and vision design from Callum Haddow, audiences have no choice but to be fully immersed in this world, listening to the sounds of growing up and struggling through in suburbia—nothing but breath, crickets, and deafening heartbeat.
COOKED, in itself, is a feat. The three women play against each other incredibly, navigating the initially disorienting chapters of the plot with tact and heart. The hard work of the cast through every word, providing a beautiful, comforting foundation for lovely character idiosyncrasy, and a deep and genuine realism in their dynamics that made my chest hurt. These characters leap off the stage; with a level of realistic grittiness that is deeply refreshing and wonderful to see from such young creatives, COOKED is a force to be reckoned with. Moreover, with costume, props and set design by Sam Hollingshead, the play’s subtle and cozy setting lent itself to what could otherwise be a difficult space to dress in its intimate scale. The warmth of the space echoed through the characters, their relation to the space truly bringing them to life.
The characters of Logan, Jean, and Mum were fluid and multifaceted; their dialogue was teeming with a wonderfully intense but grounded energy, and the typical static dialogue one might expect in a new play was nowhere to be found. The show hums with life, even in its darkest and saddest moments; every moment electrically charged, COOKED is, in the best possible way, painful in its realism.
As explained to us by Evans after the show, this iteration of COOKED is not the first, and will not be the last: the version of the play we saw has had the classic treatment of being cut from a larger work. If their nearly sold-out Sydney Fringe run was anything to go by, you’ll definitely want to be sat for the COOKED of the future, no matter its form.
While COOKED’s Fringe run is unfortunately over, stay tuned for updates on the show’s future at the show’s website.
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