Pepper and Honey – Greenwich Theatre, London

Writer: Kristina Gavran

Director: Tilly Branson

Croatian migrant Ana, played with restrained charm by a silken-voiced Tina Hofman, has been in the UK for 12 years. She has lived in three cities, drifted through seven different jobs, and has learnt how to say “lovely” and “darling” just like the English do. Now, finally, she lands her dream position as a patisserie chef in a smart urban cake shop. It even comes with a cosy flat and the possibility of buying out the popular local business.

Back in her Adriatic island birthplace, Ana’s stooping, fruit-brandy swilling ‘baba’, also played by Hoffman, cooks batch after batch of traditional pepper and honey biscuits. Each bake embodies a grandmother’s hopes for a much-missed granddaughter’s return. Now Ana must face up to a deceptively simple choice: sell her family inheritance and stay in her adopted country or return to Croatia. But despite her devotion to TV’s The Great British Bake Off, is post-Brexit Britain really a country in which the conflicted chef wants to make a life?

Croatian-born writer Kristina Gavran’s Pepper and Honey is a soft and gently lyrical reflection on what it means to call a place home. For Ana, it is somewhere she can find adventure and live out her dreams, even at the cost of perpetually feeling like a foreigner in an unfamiliar land. For her grandmother, it is a view of the sea, a daily visit to her husband’s grave, and the comforting smell of baking in a house she seldom leaves. But that too has its costs. Baba’s island is one where, aside from a brief summer tourist season, only the old reside. The young have all left to pursue opportunities elsewhere, a potent reminder the migration impacts those left behind as much as those who leave.

Hofman handles the frequent transitions between crotchety-but-loveable baba and her conflicted granddaughter with skill. Both characters invite empathy, although neither are fleshed out enough to feel wholly real. In particular, aside from her affection for cakes and TV cooking shows, we know little about Ana’s inner life. This thinly drawn characterisation makes the central choice the migrant chef faces peculiarly lacking in dramatic heft.

Gavran inserts some broad comedy into proceedings with a live on-stage cooking demonstration, delivered entirely in Croatian and aided by three bemused audience members. As a platform for some clever physical comedy, it works well enough. It also makes a deft point about the challenges migrants encounter working in a second language. But somehow it feels a touch out of sync with the tender, almost melancholic tone of the rest of the piece.

Reviewed on 30 April 2023