✭✭✭✭✩

by Zorana Sadiq, directed by Mitchell Cushman

Crow’s Theatre with Zorana Sadiq, Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto

May 18-June 8, 2025

Bette: “Teenagers are like waffles”

Crow’s Theatre concludes its 2024.25 season with the world premiere of Zorana Sadiq’s engrossing play Comfort Food. The poster for the show will lead to believe it is about a cooking show. It is, but that show in only one component of a much larger story Sadiq has to tell about the conflict between generations and the search for comfort in life. Aided by fine acting and an ingenious design, the play will take you on a far more complex and rewarding journey than the image of a cooking show will suggest.

When you enter the Studio Theatre at Streetcar Crowsnest, you choose a seat in what looks like the studio audience for a television show. Designer Sim Suzer has placed a kitchen island in the centre with a built-in stovetop and a mise en place of ingredients for a recipe. The electric waffle-maker hints that the cooking lesson will be about waffles. Near the ceiling there is an “ON AIR” sign and an “APPLAUSE” sign and an overhead camera just as on TV.

The show we are to see is called “Comfort Food” and its host is Bette, played by Sadiq herself. Bette does indeed make waffles – one version she likes and another version that child would like. She mentions that her son, who was a regular on the show when it was still on YouTube, is now a teenager, and notes that “Teenagers are like waffles” since you can’t rush them.

Bette’s offhand comparison is actually advice she could use in her own life. With a quick change in Echo Zhou’s lighting the TV show set becomes Bette’s own kitchen at home. Here she receives phone calls from her agent (voice of Aviva Armour-Ostroff) that her show’s format is getting tired and is sagging in the ratings. Here we meet Bette’s 15-year-old son KitKat, a would-be eco-activist with his own YouTube channel. He is critical of Bette’s show for never mentioning the climate catastrophe we’re heading for and its impact on how we source the food we eat.

Given that Bette’s agent phones to correct Bette when Bette’s show is taped, it doesn’t make too much sense that the agent suggests that Bette do her show live. Despite their differences, when KitKat offers to go on the show with Bette, she agrees. Viewers always liked KitKat when he was younger and she thinks it might give her show the boost it needs.

In the event, KitKat winds up hijacking Bette’s show to vent his rage about how no one is doing anything about climate change. Bette is furious with KitKat, but, ironically enough, it pushes her ratings way up and it causes a major increase in traffic to KitKat’s website.

The play combines a wide range of topics – some of which link together, some of which do not. The play would seem to be about the generational divide between Bette and KitKat and KitKat’s anger at the mess he claims Bette’s generation has made of the world that he now has to live in. Yet, strangely enough, the play also indicates that Bette and her son have much in common. Bette criticizes KitKat for obsessing over how many “friends” he has on his channel. Yet, Bette is constantly being advised how to attract more viewers to her television show. Sadiq shows us that the content of both Bette’s show and KitKat’s vlog change in response to the presumed desires of their unseen audience. The question arises for both as to how far they are willing to stray from their what they think is right in order to please this unknown other. Both become disillusioned with what used to excite them, and both seek something that will comfort them in the midst of their disillusionment.

KitKat’s problem with being conceived via IVF doesn’t really fit into the play, and it is not clear what KitKat’s rejection of Bette’s breast milk is meant to signify. The play also ends leaving us uncertain concerning Bette’s future. KitKat criticizes Bette’s show for its wastefulness, yet the point should be made that the massive amount of time such an eco-aware kid like KitKat spends online has also has ecological consequences. The carbon footprint of the devices that use and the systems that support the internet made up 3.7% of greenhouse gases in 2020, a number predicted to double in 2025.

The show wins us over from the start with the engaging performances of Sadiq and newcomer Noah Grittani as KitKat. Sadiq has a wonderful way of conveying Bette’s irritation even when Bette is trying to present herself as pleasant and accommodating. During our first glimpse of Bette’s cooking show when it is taped, she receives phone calls from her agent when Bette’s references to such negative things as “doomscrolling” are not deemed appropriate. Sadiq shows that Bette carries on even though that bit of advice is nagging at her. Sadiq makes Bette’s effort at self-control especially comic when she has different guests on her show whose views we know she finds loony just through the merest edge she gives Bette’s voice.

In his professional theatre debut Noah Grittani proves to be a real find. He plays KitKat not just as a constantly irritated teenager but as someone who has deeper concerns that are eating away at him. Grittani suggests that KitKat’s passion about the destruction of the environment is related to a feeling that the world he lives in has been destroyed in other ways that prevent him from knowing himself or knowing what gives his life meaning. Grittani also plays three other roles – the three atypical food experts – who are guests on Bette’s show. Grittani well differentiates KitKat and these three showing surprising versatility in someone still young.

Behind Sim Suzer’s kitchen set are two panels that slide apart to reveal the desk in KitKat’s room at home. There he does broadcasts of his vlog, his face in live video appearing on the two panels on either side of his computer desk. On the two panels Tori Morrison projects the comment threads that KitKat’s vlog provokes, sometimes, amidst all the praise, including disturbing remarks about him and his mother.

Both Bette and KitKat are people who want to maintain a strong control on their lives, both feel this control slipping away the more they feel compelled to fulfil other people’s visions of what they should be. Though the ending is too abrupt, Sadiq does suggest that people do have the power to refocus on what is most important in their lives. This is a feeling that should resonate strongly in a time when so many signs of progress seem to be disintegrating.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Zorana Sadiq as Bette and Noah Grittani as KitKat; Noah Grittani as KitKat; Zorana Sadiq as Bette. © 2025 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.crowstheatre.com.