Crumbs – York Theatre Royal Studio

Writer and Director: Kate Bramley

Crumbs is one of many puns in Kate Bramley’s cookery comedy for Badapple Theatre, now an associate company of York Theatre Royal. It’s a simple concept, though far from a simple performance by Ellen Carnazza who delights the audience with her virtuoso one-woman stint through two halves of some 40 minutes each.

Petronella Parfait is a celebrity television cook, just removed from her BBC show and welcoming the audience to the first night of Dough My Gosh, her new channel. There is some mystery over how successful Petronella is: we, the audience, are all Crummies (she has a red peaked cap – wonder where she got that idea), but she is in fact nearly broke, with enemies gathering on every side.

These enemies line up as Demelza Meek, the assistant who has just deserted Petronella; Lady Payne, her mother, revelling in her days as a Bond girl; Gloria Gluten, a barrister who knew Petronella at school; Mrs Crumble, the ageing cook who taught Petronella the art of bread-making and supposedly invented her signature loaf; and – her only ally until now – Penny Puttanesca, owner of the Pizza Inferno chain, sponsor of Petronella and clearly with a nodding acquaintance to the Mafia.

Their theme is, “Justice for Mrs. Crumble!” As Petronella prepares and cooks her signature loaf for the television audience amid collapsing props on one half of the stage (and making good on the advance promise to bake some bread for audience consumption), the other characters bob up on the other half to defame her. Carnazza dons wig or hat or headscarf, checks in Petronella’s elongated vowels and assumes the required accent: Mrs Crumble’s Welsh is particularly diverting, though the character of Penny, with her Gina Lollobrigida look, is the highlight.

The crowds gather, Penny has had enough of Petronella’s scrounging, but there is one moment of sheer delight to come: Petronella’s encounter with Big Tony, Penny’s enforcer. If the appearances of the others (framed by a television screen) are a touch routine, that’s something that could not be said for Petronella’s running from Tony, Tony pursuing, and their resultant fight. Who comes out on top? How about Ellen Carnazza?

A.J. Lowe designs a neat kitchen set with working oven and there is the ultimately heavily ironic use of soothing classical music in a very jolly evening which cocks a snook in the direction of the cult of celebrity.

Sadly your reviewer cannot comment on the bread quality: none remained by the time he exited.

Runs until 23 May 2026