Review: Sauce and Sorcery at the Royal Court Studio ***

The Royal Court Studio has become one of the main spaces in Liverpool to showcase new work – not least from the playwrights who is nurtures through its own Stage Write programme.

Step forward Paddy Clarke (who is also an alumnus of the Everyman’s playwrights’ programme), with his ambitious new comedy Sauce and Sorcery, a theatrical flight of fancy which, Kansas tornado like, scoops up cultural references – Harry Potter, Men in Black and Beauty and the Beast among them, as it furrows its own wild and unpredictable path.

Finn (Roman Ryan) and grandad Grant (Carl Cockram) run the Abrakebabra Chippy in Old Swan. It's the kind of place (you know the one, sandwiched between a beauty salon and letting agents) that you usually see in a ‘these takeaways have a zero-star hygiene rating’ news story.

Theirs is a fractious family relationship – there’s simmering resentment beneath the surface, fuelled, it emerges as the plot progresses by bereavement and unresolved feelings, and a lot of rowing and raised voices from the start. On top of that, it seems it’s not just the battered sausages that might be dodgy.

The clue is in the name of the chippy, because it turns out Grant and his grandson supplement the salt and vinegar with spells, and the haddock can come with a hex. And so the muggles of Old Swan don’t spread the word, they send them away with a side order of memory loss.

A letter ‘from the South’ (shadowy, never really explained. A Ministry of Magic perhaps?) about the irresponsible use of magic in a built-up area sends a shot across Grant’s bows, but the spirit swigging grandad is seemingly unrepentant.

Until that is, Finn unwittingly laces the local Scally drug dealer Tony’s (Michael Hawkins) chips with something that definitely isn’t curry sauce.

Above: Carl Cockram, Michael Hawkins, Daniel Owen and Roman Ryan in Sauce and Sorcery. Top: Carl Cockram as Grant. Photos by Andrew AB Photography

It leads to the best scene in the show with Hawkins’ bemused and belligerent ‘businessman’ fetching up at the door with a bag of assorted knickknacks which may or may not have a mind of their own.

Sorcerer’s apprentice Finn isn’t happy at all. And if grandad Grant doesn’t fix things pronto, he’ll have had his last, well, fix.

The cast is completed by the versatile Daniel Owen who appears in several very different guises over the course of the evening.

As a premise, Sauce and Sorcery has real promise and there are some scenes where dark arts and dark humour combine harmoniously.

Hawkins, soon to be seen as John Lennon in Beatle musical Shake It Up Baby, is particularly good value both as the menacing dealer and in a later ‘reincarnation’, while Cockram - an unpredictable Morecambe to Ryan's exasperated Wise - has huge fun channelling his all into his role as a revolting, slobbish magical mischief maker.

At present however, there are other sections of the play which need some finessing to achieve their potential.

There’s also fine line between pacy and manic, and Sauce and Sorcery veers across it at times, while the Studio is a small space in which any big, scenery chewing moments can unbalance the dynamics of the piece.

There’s certainly time during its generous run on the Studio stage to expelliarmus those creases though and create something that really flies. Just watch out for the Scallies with air rifles.