Angela’s Kitchen

Delightful evenings like Angela’s Kitchen are a reminder of just how powerful, engaging and charming theatre at its simplest storytelling levels can be.

Paul Capsis, one of our most flamboyant musical theatre and cabaret performers, reveals a more introspective side in this intensely personal autobiographical memoir of his beloved maternal grandmother, growing up in Surry Hills as a Maltese Australian, and his own two visits to Malta. He joyously traverses his Maltese and migrant heritage and the island’s wartime experiences, while sharing the story of an extraordinary woman who transplanted her life and five children to the opposite side of the world.

The staging is apparently simple, yet full of delightful theatrical treats. It is Angela’s kitchen – the kitchen table, large timber pantry and fifties style refrigerator. But the cupboard becomes a screen for photographs of family members and places, while the entire wall of the Stables Theatre becomes a screen for captions, and later for a sweeping picture postcard diorama of old Malta.

For a while the storytelling seems rather reflective, and you wonder whether the familiar, larger-than-life Paul Capsis we know is going to emerge, but as he introduces the various colourful members of his extended family, that doubt vanishes.

In turns entertaining and poignant, Angela’s Kitchen is a delightful encounter with Malta and the Maltese Australian migrant experience through Capsis’s eyes, combined with a delicious child’s eye view of growing up in the inner Sydney migrant community.

It’s a rich, special privilege to meet the warm, strong woman who was Paul Capsis’s grandmother, and be invited inside their extraordinary relationship.

This mutlti-faceted little theatre gem should engage even the most jaded theatergoer.

Neil Litchfield

Photos: Paul Capsis in Angela's Kitchen. Photographer: Michael Corridore