Te Radar's CookBookery!
Theatre Royal, 78 Rutherford Street, Nelson
06/09/2024 - 06/09/2024
Production Details
Writer / Director: Te Radar
Writer: Ruth Spencer
The Radar Foundation
A comedic celebration of food from the beloved and bizarre cookbooks of our past. Te Radar has sampled a century and a half of New Zealand cookbooks to find the tastiest morsels, with a side of sumptuous vintage food photography.
Revealing New Zealand’s rich – and weird – home cooking heritage we rediscover celebrity chefs such as Graham Kerr, Alison Holst, Aunt Daisy and Hudson and Halls. We’ll savour cookbooks designed to get us eating more dairy, tamarillos or kiwifruit, and the desperate lengths they go to: Cold Sour Kiwifruit Soup anyone? We’ll get a taste of cookbooks from school fundraisers and recipe contests: recipes supplied by ordinary kiwis that suggest some of us were not to be trusted with food.
Why did we disguise mutton as poultry? Why did Alison Holst believe fried brains were the perfect food for children? And is the brilliant “Recipes With Canned Foods Are Interesting” the greatest cookbook ever written in the nation’s history?
Multi award-winning comedian and documentarian Te Radar dishes up a smorgasbord of kiwi recipes moulded into a deliciously hilarious and sentimental journey through the Cookbookery of our past.
Theatre Royal Nelson
Fiday 6 September 2024
7.30pm
McCombs Performing Arts Centre, Cashmere High School, Christchurch
1 November 2024
https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2024/te-radars-cookbookery-chs-spanish-class-fundraiser/christchurch
The Boatshed, Blenheim
15 November 2024
7.30pm
Booking Link TBC
The Classic, Auckland
1 December 2024
5pm
Booking Link TBC
Visual design / Performer: Te Radar
Visual design: Ruth Spencer
Comedy , Theatre , Solo ,
120mins
Go for the cherries, stay for the carrots
Review by Sarah Wilson 25th Sep 2024
Many New Zealanders might agree that although our cuisine of the last 100 years wasn’t the fanciest in the world, we certainly made up for it in tenacity.
Te Radar has been developing this show in shorter styles, with the premiere of the two-hour version getting a genuine endorsement from the Nelson Theatre Royal audience. The stage is simple with a classic 1980s cookbook on a pedestal and a pull up screen, giving a retro vibe of the classic slide night. From the moment Te Radar appears, he radiates warmth and enthusiasm, and it’s very clear that he really knows his stuff when it comes to New Zealand cookbooks, as a longtime collector, experimenter and taster.
The format of the show is simple – Te Radar is our guide through New Zealand cookbooks, highlighting their wonders and absurdities. The screen is a never-ending parade of glorious photography, improbable dishes, helpful serving suggestions and unwilling models. Te Radar is in his element, with a well-written storyline that drives the show, a rhythm that keeps the audience enthralled, and the confidence to veer off-script to cater to reactions and interjections.
The show looks at cookbooks through the 20th century, exposing their many foibles, indulgences, and downright optimism. Tired of eating mutton three times a day? Try Colonial Goose. Run out of butter? Reach for the codfat. Need some cherries? Well, go to the show for the most ingenious solution imaginable. It seems that New Zealanders have a real knack for disguising foods as other foods.
All the well-known experts are referenced – Aunt Daisy, Graham Kerr, Alison Holst and Hudson and Halls – and the phenomena that is Edmonds, and Te Radar has some clear favourites amongst the lesser-known cooks, and this is where his knowledge really shines.
The beauty of putting the recipes on screen, is that the audience can read the ingredients and instructions alongside Te Radar’s commentary – it really heightens the collective enjoyment, and encourages the laughter and chorus of “oh no’s!”
Te Radar’s Cookbookery! is the perfect recipe for a night out – lots of laughs, loads of eyeopeners on taste and presentation, some frank advice on what to avoid in the kitchen, and the reassurance that we’ve come a long way in our kiwi culinary adventures.
It’s a cracker of a show. Go for the cherries, stay for the carrots.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments