Crow’s Theatre presents Comfort Food
I unapologetically love watching The Food Network, I have ever since I was a kid. My favourite shows are always the competition based shows, but I always enjoy watching the talk-show style productions, or the ones where a host shares tips, tricks, and recipes with their audiences. Naturally, Comfort Food, now playing at Crow’s Theatre, caught my attention when I saw that it was centered around – you guessed it – a cooking show. Comfort Food is an endearing, meaningful play, touching on finding one’s identity, parental love, navigating the technological world, and trying to make sense of the calamity that comes with being a single mom while balancing a fickle career. Running from May 13 to June 8, 2025, in the Studio Theatre, this world premiere is both written and performed by Zorana Sadiq, featuring Noah Grittani as KitKat, with direction by Mitchell Cushman.
The play centers on Bette, a beloved cooking show host whose youthful, energetic persona is beginning to wane. As her television career faces uncertainty, she grapples with her son KitKat’s increasing withdrawal into the digital world, particularly his concerns about the climate crisis. Their once-shared love for cooking becomes a symbol of their growing disconnect. Bette must put on a TV friendly smile while she loses touch with her son, who is finding his own identity – and fame via the internet. The concepts of fame and popularity are mirrored well in this piece though, after both Bette and KitKat change their approach on how they share their points to their audiences after Bette’s son makes an appearance on her show, creating an internet viral moment that changes everything for them both.
I’ve never seen a production in the Studio Space at Crows, but it was the perfect space for this one act, 100 minute show. The set was utilized perfectly, and the clever use of cameras and screens to highlight both Bette’s cooking show, and KitKat’s YouTube show made the small stag feel a lot bigger and complex, so kudos toset and costume designer Sim Suzer, sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne, lighting designer Echo Zhou, and video designer Tori Morrison .
The acting between the two performers is absolutely stellar, and very believable. They really captured the tumultuous mother/son relationship well, and Grittani does an excellent job in portraying several characters well, all having unique voices and perspectives. Sadiq also does a fantastic job when it comes to her downward spiral when it comes to figuring out what she as a TV show host must do in order to maintain her employment.
My criticism of the show is that I feel like it’s trying to say a lot in such a short amount of time. For example, and this is a spoiler alert, KitKat’s rebellious nature grows so much that he decides to create a video centered around violence, and that he’s teetering into the edge of the Dark Web, but then it feels like nothing happens. It builds and builds to fall flat. Could this be to show that even with fame and power, a kid is still a kid? There are points about being a single mom, having a sperm donor, holding onto the past, embracing age, environmentalism, ‘popular’ culture present in high school, acting vs doing when it comes to activism, accepting phoniness when it comes to reigniting your career, being a hypocrite, and so much more. The storyline isn’t hard to follow, I credit Sadiq for creating a piece that can be followed, leaving a beautifully optimistic ending, but at times it felt a little muddy with all these points coming at you at once.
That being said though, this piece makes you think, and ponder your own life and your relationships both in the online world and in the physical world. I often would flip flop between understanding KitKat’s point of view, being a son myself, and agreeing with Bette’s view at times, mainly because I saw the love and concern she had for her son, the same my mom has for me. That’s what makes this piece so real, so genuine. You can tell that Sadiq tapped into a very real experience when it comes to both parent and child growing up, both having experienced very different challenges.
Overall, this earnest performance left me questioning my own relationship with my mom, and what I had to do to carve out my own space not just between us, but in the grand scheme of the world. I feel like this production would be most appreciated by the moms out there, but also for anyone who enjoys seeing the evolution of a relationship in a unique, and fresh way.
Comfort Food is playing at Crow’s Theatre (345 Carlaw Ave.) now, until Sunday, June 8.
Tickets are available here
[Review by Shan Fernando]