SAUCE

Bewley's Cafe Theatre
★★★★☆
Ciara Elizabeth Smyth's play is a love letter to sauce, that unctuous flavour-enhancer that transforms food "from bland to bliss." Sauce is just what poor Mella (Smyth) and Maura (Camille Lucy Ross) need to spice up their sad, lonely lives. Smyth, who delights in innuendo, might have had them roll around in some sticky sweet-and-sour paste, but instead she bestows upon her heroines' even more extreme avenues of escape: Maura is a kleptomaniac; Mella a compulsive liar. Set in "a sharp and sour South Dublin suburb", "the most suffocating peninsula in the county", the play unfolds over the course of a single day, as the pair flirt with disaster and forge an unlikely friendship. Although the script loses its way towards the end – an extended scene of psychological explanation pulls the surreal comedy towards bad realism – the performances pull it together, as Smyth and the hilarious Ross, who can provoke hysterics with a single raised eyebrow, bring to life a variety of familiar character types. The result is a really funny show that is also very saucy, just not in the way you might expect.

Runs as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival until Saturday, September 21st