Eat Your Heart Out at La Mama

Eat Your Heart Out is a new comedy coming to La Mama Courthouse Theatre in March 2024. This may be the perfect play for our buzzing neighbourhood of restaurants and cafes. 

The story is about fine dining or, more specifically, two wealthy sisters who meet regularly, once a week, for lunch. Until misfortune strikes – catapulting them on a chaotic quest to find the meaning of life. 

Their interrogation of existence results in religious revelations, attempted revolution, cannibalistic fantasies and an anaphylactic reaction to paprika. Something more than most lunch time conversations on Lygon St.

The show is written by local writer Angela Buckingham, who said it was sure to be a fun night out for everyone who “occasionally berates themselves for drinking bottled water, feels a little guilty while pretending to be too busy to even see the charity representatives on street corners or really wants to be a generous, bike-riding vegan but finds themselves yelling at their kids while stuck in the drive-through queue”. 

It is directed by well-known comedy director, Peter Houghton, who bought us the much loved The Heartbreak Choir for MTC’s 2022 season. 

He said he took on Eat Your Heart Out because he “loved the freshness and freedom in the language, the speed of thought and ease of both characters. It has dazzle”.

We are promised a stellar cast including versatile actors, Carolyn Bock and Helen Hopkins, a great duo, who regularly work together. 

The waiter is played by Clare Bartholomew, “one of Melbourne’s premier clowns” (it’s thrilling to hear that Melbourne has premier clowns). 

The production team behind this comedy is The Shift Theatre. They are regulars at La Mama and bought us the sell-out show, Garage Girls – a co-production with Three Birds Theatre in 2023, and the much darker but critically acclaimed #NoExemptions in 2022. 

This year marks the 15th anniversary for The Shift Theatre, an impressive record in the brutal but exciting world of Melbourne independent theatre. In this cultural scene, it is not surprising that this production has some strong language. •