Review: 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche at the Hope Street Theatre ***1/2
Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood’s atomic satire 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche has become something of a fringe favourite since it was premiered 15 years ago.
It picked up two awards at the 2012 NYC International Fringe Festival, including best overall production, and this summer made its way across the pond to delight festivalgoers north of the border in Scotland. Meanwhile this coming week another production is due to be staged as part of London’s Lambeth Fringe.
Now it can also add the Liverpool Fringe to its festival roster, presented at the Hope Street Theatre for two nights as part of the 2026 programme
Small town America, 1956. In the wider world, Elvis is shaking up those new-fangled teenagers with his suggestive swivelling hips, Eisenhower is back in the White House, there’s a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, the Soviets are brutally crushing the plucky Hungarian Uprising and Britain is embroiled in the Suez Crisis, the fallout of which threatens to precipitate a dramatic Cold War confrontation.
Inside the town's community centre meanwhile, the sash-wearing ‘widows’ of the Susan B Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein (motto - ‘no meat, no men, good manners’) are awaiting the announcement of the winner of the hotly anticipated annual quiche competition - when it is rudely interrupted by the sound of sirens.
Is Nikita Khrushchev practising for his later Cuban misadventure? Or is the balloon (and mushroom cloud) really going up?
Thanks to gruff, tough, tool belt-toting Vern (Jade Fortune), armageddon may be unfolding outside, but the ladies who lunch are safe indoors where they have iron rations stockpiled to survive several nuclear winters. Albeit with one disastrous oval-shaped omission.
Blending 1950s Cold War paranoia, keen observations on society’s expectation of women and plenty of campy farce, 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche is an enjoyably arch piece of theatre which careens along merrily while the unfolding narrative becomes ever more preposterous, albeit retaining an underlying thoughtfulness.
The five-strong cast fill the roles of the society's organising committee.
In addition to Vern, there’s neatly coiffured chairwoman Lulie (Linzy Boden), a stickler for protocol and (in public at least) adherence to the organisation’s motto; Dale (Abbie Reader) the society’s seemingly sweet-natured chronicler with, as we discover, a complex and traumatic backstory; willowy and excitable events organiser Wren (Rachel Sharples), and British newcomer Ginny (Kizzy Leigh), young, naïve and intensely devoted to the cause.
Meanwhile we the audience become the body of the society’s membership - including one hapless theatregoer who is picked on as ‘Marjorie’, seemingly a disgraced former member of the organising committee who has committed an unmentioned sin.
If a woman in a pinny bearing a quiche is the ultimate figure of female domesticity, for the society the life-giving, life-nurturing egg is the ultimate symbol of female empowerment.
And while the ladies may have the whole ‘trad wife’ vibe going, looks can be (deliberately) deceptive.
Because when cut off from the rigid societal rules and expectations around the accepted role of women, which vanish with the atomic blast, this band of very capable sisters can finally be themselves, admit their closely guarded secret, and organise to save their society and by extension the world.
The cast capture the golly gosh earnestness of suburban, small-town America of the period, and imbue the action with an enjoyable larkiness, embracing the script’s not-so-subtle sexual innuendos (there’s much orgasmic moaning at the anticipation of, and indeed eating of, the quiche) and general all-round silliness.
Saying that, the action would benefit from a bit of a pacier, punchier and tighter delivery, notably in the opening scene which felt rather hesitant and meandering on the first night. It certainly moves up a gear with the arrival of Boden’s smoothly commanding leader.
Fortune has a delightful deadpan delivery as Vern, but I’m not entirely sure why, when the production is faithful to story's American setting, the character speaks with a strong Scouse accent. It’s never alluded to or explained away, and jars somewhat.
Meanwhile director Jordan Spratt has made the decision to insert an interval into proceedings which it could be argued puts a brake on the rising chaos, but in fact turns out to be a good call because it creates a great cliffhanger moment to then be resolved.