Lil Saffron: Ragu to Riches continues at The Mash House, Edinburgh until 28 August 2022.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
My heart sank for these guys when there were only eight of us in the audience on Friday. I wondered if word had got around that it wasn’t up to much. But I was wrong. Totally wrong. It was up to much.
We enter the “restaurant” to some decent beats by Maître-DJ Hugh Edwards, so we know what musical world we’re in.
Writer Michael Kunze is Lil Saffron, the best pasta chef in the world. According to him, he’s “the sultan of putting salt on”. Granny Gloria (also Kunze) isn’t so sure. She tastes his Ragu and gets food poisoning. There’s something missing. But what’s the secret ingredient? And that’s where the story kicks off.
Beat poetry and rap are on the menu, and there are more food-related puns than you can shake a breadstick at. (The DJ’s described as a “beat farmer”, geddit?)
It’s sort of absurdist, and for a while, I wondered where it was going. Kunze plays all the characters, including a magical cow and a potato that looks like a swede. (“She’s not a Swede, she’s Irish.”) Each of the characters is as gloriously mad as the next.
Lil Saffron and Maître-DJ treat us to some rap improv to ingredients suggested by the audience, sorry, the diners. They hilariously nail every rhyme.
It’s a quirky little show that deserves a decent crowd. The Maître-DJ is a great foil for Lil Saffron while Kunze is funny, charming and bizarre all at once.
With tickets for the price of a starter, go feed yourself at this banquet of bonkers.
Steven Wren
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