witty, familiar and effective one-woman story
Spending mornings mopping the milk spillage on aisle three is the usual routine for Lucy, writer and performer Kitty Evans’ jaded and witty protagonist of this story. Dodging dodgy customers, avoiding her manager Dave, battling with Belinda her overbearing colleague – it’s all to be expected on the shop floor of the busy local supermarket where she works. But it’s the reappearance of an old school friend that breaks this monotony, Lucy is suddenly forced to confront her past whether she’s ready or not. Checkout is Pistachio Theatre’s one-woman comedy where the frontlines of customer service provide more than just angry customers and out of date meal deals.
The production shines most inside the supermarket itself, allowing Evans to stand out in comedic multi-rolls as the various shop goers and allowing the audience to settle into a world full of familiar characters. Evans as the greasy-haired supermarket manager Dave provides some effective and familiar comic relief, allowing for familiar ruminations between ‘he’s a bit inappropriate but he’s alright’ and ‘I just wish this man knew more about personal space’.
Nice moments also come from the back and forth between Lucy and her mum. It’s the perfect combination of the trials of living at home as an adult, with overbearing parent asking interrogation-style questions, mixed with a touching portrayal of parents unsure how to help but trying their best.
Evans is on the whole in command of the stage, embodying characters and solid comedic timing, unafraid of staring the audience right in the eye as the production gets silly, and even when it gets serious. A tinder date with a man called ‘Hugo’ was wonderfully horrible, Evans adopting ridiculous mannerisms that received deserving laughs.
At other times however, the script seemed to overwhelm the performance, the words getting in the way of spontaneity and presenting a slightly rigid feeling and occasionally stepping into cliché and overacting. The digressions from the supermarket plot occasionally take the wind out of the moving pace of the production, like a unnecessary foray into a casino, or ineffective getting ready montages. When the show focuses strictly on the plot and the funnier caricatures the show regains pace and originality lost in those moments.
The ending twist into Lucy’s self-discovery was nicely handled and didn’t veer too far into cliché, but it failed to find that true connection to the setting of the show and lost some of it’s emotional punch.
On the whole Checkout is a witty, familiar and effective one-woman story of the bravery needed to face your past, and that sometimes familiar monotony, even in a supermarket, is a good place to start.
Runs until Saturday 6th July.
Writer and performer: Kitty Evans
Director: Safia Lamrani