"Sex & Chocolate!" was first performed in 2000.

I hesitate to guess what associations readers might have with the first part of that title and Strathpeffer, but many will doubtless have thought instantly of Maya Belgian Chocolates in the town's Main Street. The good news is that the first 100 ticket holders at the performance will receive a free box containing four of chocolatier Fabienne du Mulder's hand-made creations.

"The organisers at Strathpeffer Pavilion approached Fabienne about sponsoring the show," Knowles revealed. "And she offered to sponsor quite a number of the shows on this tour with these boxes. I hope there is one left over for me."

The actress turned 50 when the show was written and the central character is a woman in mid-life crisis on the eve of her own 50th birthday. She acknowledged the echoes of "Shirley Valentine" in the scenario, but Rona Munro's script then takes off in her own distinctive fashion. When the play opens, the character is alone in her office after a party, when her younger colleagues have all gone clubbing.

"She is feeling very sorry for herself all on her own and wondering what she has done with her life," Knowles explained. "As she leaves the office she is thinking that she wishes she had some chocolate. She recalls hearing an old man interviewed on the radio who said when asked if he had any regrets that he wishes he had had more sex, and she thinks 'I'm with him on that one, but I'd have said more chocolate too'."

The show then moves out of the office and into a series of adventures in which she meets a mysterious motor biker, is taken to a casino, gets involved with a shady smuggler and is whisked off on a plane to Spain where she flees from mobsters and has various other very Munro-like adventures and bizarre plot twists.

Fiona Knowles in 'Sex and Chocolate'.

"It's a good fun romp and a wee bit different from some of Rona's other scripts for me," the actress suggested. "It's very bizarre and fantastical, but underneath that there is a lot that people can identify with in terms of the way we feel about ourselves as we get older."

While all of these shifts of location seem to demand a major production with elaborate stage sets, props and costumes, Knowles has taken precisely the opposite approach.

"I've always suspected that Rona is really a film writer," she laughed. "I remember asking her when she wrote this how exactly she saw all these locations working and she just looked at me and said, well, that's your department, I just write it!

"So basically I have a chair, and that's it. Years ago I worked with an actor named George Byatt in a company called Theatre PKF and he used to say that we don't need all the paraphernalia of sets and costumes and all the rest of it. When in doubt, simplify, was his motto and that is what we have done. So the audience have to use their imaginations and it seems to work. Funnily enough I had very good reactions from a couple of young teenagers at a show recently, which I wouldn't have expected."

* Sex & Chocolate! is at Strathpeffer Pavilion on Thursday.

Tuesday Reviews - only in the Courier
The Gondoliers, Eden Court
Dizzee Rascal, The Ironworks
365, Eden Court 

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend