Sausage and Samosa

Writer and performer Elaine Panting takes the role of Eve, an environmentalist, dry-wall expert and supermarket samosa stuffer in this one woman show about looking for love.

She kicks off with a bravura display of Indian dance that lifts the spirits of the room and puts the audience in the mood to please. But the show never seems to reach that vital lift off moment where the character, story and audience become one.

Instead it develops into a series of energetic sketches launching at primary school where Eve is robbed of her first boyfriend and progressing to a hilarious scene where she stalks a handsome interesting man only to be asked the deep and meaningful question: ‘Are you ready to accept Jesus into your life?’. ‘Yes’ she shouts, still eager to get into his pants, and a host of comical exploits follow.

Except they don’t. And therein lies the problem. Despite setting up some promising man-hunting scenarios involving six week shops at supermarkets, dog walking stalkers, lonesome clubbing and volunteering, the writer loses the comic thread of Eve’s journey and fails to deliver enough comedy juice to keep the audience concerned.

Occasional attempts to find depth in the character and storyline by punctuating the sketches with pithy Indian phrases and snippets of ancient wisdom become faintly embarrassing and skirt dangerously close to an end of term drama project.

As it draws to its conclusion the Indian theme of arranged marriages and menial factory workers begins to feel somewhat tacked on, as if two different plays were brought together. Then, in the last quarter, the show takes a right turn and suddenly becomes a sort of Ready Steady Date as Eve turns into an Asian Cilla and involves the audience in her choice of suitor for an imagined wedding. We’re told to hold up our sausage or samosa cards when we see the man of her dreams on the screen - again a promising routine which isn’t funny enough or brought to any firm satisfying climax.

Sausage and samosa seems to be one of those ‘nearly’ shows where a bit more work on the script would have transformed the whole work. But you know those supermarket samosas - a tasty enticing shell, but not enough filling to get your teeth into.