Given the amount of ink spilled on our other basic
desires—sex, love, wealth and power—the number of plays that address
hunger is surprisingly small. This is not true of any other art form;
there have been books about eating as long as there have been books (see
Genesis) and food, in its still-running form, was the subject of the earliest human paintings. A good fifth of Carmina Burana is devoted to eating and drinking, not to mention The Nutcracker. And yet, save for Little Shop of Horrors, onstage eating remains a rarity.
Eugenia Woods seeks to make up for her fellow writers’ indifference to hunger in a big way in Famished,
a new drama presented by Portland Playhouse as part of the Fertile
Ground festival. A mash-up of recorded interviews, composed scenes and
striking, silent movement, the performance encompasses every imaginable
food neurosis: anorexia and stress bingeing; the irrational pickiness of
children and the moralistic pickiness of adults; the conflation of
feeding and love, hunger and lust.
The narrative portion
of the play follows a family through three generations’ evolving food
hang-ups, exploring the ways emotions and food are intertwined, for
better or worse. Presiding over the story is Our Lady of Insatiable
Desire, a dancer (Jessica Wallenfels) in a doll-like white dress adorned
with an outline of the alimentary system in bright LEDs, who performs
the characters’ unspoken hungers. Not all of the story makes sense—the
heavyset husband’s affair with a taco-truck cook is nonsensical and
verges on overt racism—but much of it rings true. Sharonlee McLean gives
a poignant performance as the butter-loving matron, who expresses her
love for her family through carbs but cannot share the food she makes
them out of fear of her own heft, and Michael Cline hogs the laughs as
an Escoffier-quoting teenage foodie. But most delightful of all is Isaac
Lamb’s scathing rebuttal of his Pollan-apostle girlfriend’s objections
to his eating a hamburger: “How do you generate so much talk,” he asks,
“on so little food?”
SEE IT: Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 205-0715,
portlandplayhouse.org. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 pm
Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Through Feb. 5. $12-$23.
