Pass The Spoon: A Deliciously Daft Operatic Recipe For Festive Mayhem

If there's a theatrical tonic for the winter blues, it's Pass the Spoon at the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds. This isn't merely a show – it's a gloriously unhinged prescription for seasonal levity that demands immediate attention. Miss it at your peril.

There's something completely different, as the Pythons might say, and indeed, this collaboration between visual artist David Shrigley, director Nicholas Bone, and composer David Fennessy carries distinct echoes of Monty Python's anarchic spirit. A sort of opera about cookery? Precisely – and therein lies its barmy brilliance.

The Howard Assembly Room stage hosts 12 Opera North musicians garbed as chefs, setting the scene for what proves to be opera's answer to pantomime: a confection of camp, good-hearted absurdity delivered with razor-sharp comic timing from every performer.

Amy J Payne as June Spoon and Ben Yorke-Griffiths as Vegetables Photo: Tom Arber

Frazer Scott as Mr Egg, Mark Nathan as Banana and Amy J Payne as June Spoon Photo: Tom Arber

Picture a daytime cookery programme where Ready Steady Cook collides with Master Chef in a spectacular pile-up. Our hosts are the magnificent June Spoon (Amy J Payne, utterly adorable) and Philip Fork (Xavier Hetherington, equally ravishing in his delivery), both tasked with preparing dinner for a rather ghastly giant puppet, Mr Granules (Ben Yorke-Griffiths). Hetherington's vocal technique achieves virtuosic heights of brilliance.

The production occasionally veers into League of Gentlemen territory – double entendres abound, language turns deliciously crude (one fellow critic visibly winced), but this is Christmas, demanding extrovert merriment. Embrace it.

The rhyming wordplay and poetic licence deliver pure, unadulterated daftness. The engaged audience enthusiastically joins the chants, surrendering to bouts of chuntering laughter that ripple through the auditorium like culinary waves.

Spoon and Fork's mission—to create a meal for the supposedly baby-eating monster Mr Granules—grows increasingly sinister through Mike Lock's excellent lighting design. As they hunt vegetables for their soup, interrogations commence: a wonderfully tremulous potato threatened by Fork's menacing potato peeler, followed by carrot and turnip, all superbly inhabited by Yorke-Griffiths.

Further eccentric ingredients emerge: a butcher who's found God (Peter Van Hulle), sporting traditional butcher's garb topped with a vicar's stole; an exotic, conceited banana (Mark Nathan, débonair personified); and what can only be described as a manic-depressive, alcoholic egg (Frazer Scott), who doubles as Shit and Dung Beetle. Scott captures this character with impeccable dryness.

Banana's desperate attempts to avoid becoming custard prove hilarious. When Mr Granules devours Spoon in a magnificent theatrical moment, Banana and Fork must persuade the Butcher to surgically intervene and rescue their colleague.

Garry Walker, as head chef-conductor, brings Fennessy's innovative score to vibrant life. Massimo Martone, on percussion, delights with an arsenal of kitchen utensils: sharpening knives, balloons, bubble wrap (mimicking sizzling fat), whisks, and chopping boards. Everything arrives on cue, brilliantly executed. At moments, the ensemble softly intones hymn-like passages – the butcher's hymn concluding eloquently with "For this is the filling, the pie and gravy," substituting 'gravy' for 'Amen'. Genius. These musicians clearly relish the mayhem as much as the audience.

Naturally, everything resolves happily, Spoon survives, and the audience rolls in their seats, thoroughly satisfied by this jolly, exuberant production of slapstick excess. The choreography throughout demonstrates meticulous timing, the humour deliberately exaggerated.

Absurd? Undoubtedly. But what glorious, therapeutic fun.

Frazer Scott as Mr Egg, Mark Nathan as Banana, Amy J Payne as June Spoon and Xavier Hetherington as Phillip Fork Photo: Tom Arber

Pass the Spoon is on at the Howard Assembly Room until 21 December click here to book
Conductor: Garry Walker
Director: Nicholas Bone
Costumer Designer: David Shrigley
Set Designer: Bek Palmer
Lighting Designer Mike Lock
Running time 1hr 15m

Read Liz Coggins Behind the Kitchen Door feature with Amy Payne Behind-Kitchen-Door-Amy-J-Payne