Aristotle stated that "men cannot know each other until they have eaten salt together, nor can they admit each other to friendship until each has been found lovable and trusted". Fiona Peek's drama, a winner of the Royal Exchange's Bruntwood playwriting competition, concerns a group of friends who eat salt together, but find themselves less lovable and trustworthy than they thought.
Rachel (Esther Hall) and Nick (Kevin Harvey) are a couple in crisis: she has been trying for a baby and he has been trying for a novel, both with limited success. They are also drowning in debt, which distinguishes them from their oldest friends, Simon (Simon Chadwick) and Amy (Beth Cordingley), who ill-advisedly decide to give them some money. The point at which selfless generosity becomes compromising patronage is developed by a scene in which Simon and Nick – who like to lock horns over bouts of competitive cooking – add salt to soup one grain at a time.
The relationship soon sours: Nick attacks Simon for being smug, Rachel attacks Amy for being fertile, and the table is overturned in fury, though not until the expensive crockery has been cleared. Peek's point seems to be that, since everyone has become middle class, there is a new sub-division between those who can actually afford aspirational cheese platters and those who can't. It's not the most original observation, as the characters themselves seem to admit. Rachel complains that her problems seem "so enormous yet so insignificant", while her partner protests that he "isn't some 90s throwback Nick Hornby commitment-phobe", exactly as you might expect a commitment-phobic Nick Hornby throwback to say.
The performances are intense, though it is not easy to tell if director Jo Combes is aiming for satire or sincerity. But then, what do you call a play that uses a bowl of vichyssoise as its central metaphor? A soup opera, perhaps.
