Two lonely women are both separately having terrible days in SAUCE, performed by the Bare Witness Theatre Company and directed by Christopher Samuel Carroll at Smiths Alternative in Canberra.
Mella (Ashleigh Butler) has just heard that her grandmother has died, and she has consequently lost her housing and her only role as a caregiver. Maura (Claire Imlach) has woken up in bed while her husband is having sex with another woman literally right next to her.
These brutal discoveries are quickly rendered more brutal by the reactions of those around them. Men who explain how the Mella’s and Maura’s respective situations are somehow their fault, the gossip of their cliquey communities, their quick funnelling into unhelpful religious and weight loss groups.
But then, both women are used to this treatment. Desperately friendless and deeply awkward, their bad days are grounds for unexpected solidarity when they meet.
Finding connection in their compulsions – lying, stealing and ordering take aways – and finding mutual ground on their shared obsession with sauce, the two women’s quick friendship feels fated. Hardship and bonding are well-paced through the play’s relatively short (60-minute) run time, which gives the production a zany, high energy befitting the sparkling comedic dialogue. Time is also set aside for moments of poetics – odes to takeaway food and, particularly, to sauces.
Originally written by Ciara Elizabeth Smyth for the 2019 Dublin Fringe Festival, this production of SAUCE makes local adaptations to ground the material with Australian and Canberra-specific references. Both actors accomplish the feat of playing multiple parts in quick succession with clarity, while conveying the community as both highly insular and mean.
Read: Exhibition review: Yayoi Kusama, NGV International
SAUCE is a snippet of life, a challenging time of grief and betrayal, a quest for self-understanding and connection. It’s about accepting in a friend what you don’t like about yourself.
SAUCE
Smith’s Alternative, Canberra
Writer: Ciara Elizabeth Smyth
Director: Christopher Samuel Carroll
Composer: Jennifer O’Malley
Lighting Designer: Ash Basham
Cast: Ashleigh Butler, Claire Imlach
SAUCE was performed from 11-15 December. It will tour to Melbourne to play at the Butterfly Club from 18-21 December 2024.
