Chop-chop! Review

November 26, 2024

Chop-chop! Review

23rd & 24th November 2024

I became well acquainted with Spanglish over my four years at Exeter University, trying – and often failing – to remember that the most important part of language learning is being able to communicate. But my kind of Spanglish is very different to the kind of Spanglish you speak when, like writer and performer Andrea Holland, you’re born to a Spanish mother and an English father.

So, meet Spanish and English: two intense and colourful characters, albeit for different reasons. The two characters, who are expertly played by Holland, come across as flatmates who don’t always understand eachother, in a clever nod to the complexity of bilingual brains – something we rarely see represented on stage or screen for that matter.

“Chop-chop! is as physically funny as it is rhetorically”

English is big on shared calendars, sleeping schedules – even though she struggles to get more than two hours sleep a night – and cleaning because life is about getting things done and being productive. Spanish is just going with the flow, feeling her emotions and enjoying life’s smaller things by cooking a tortilla without following a recipe.

Holland explores these ideas through two lenses: sending an email, which obviously has to start with I hope this email finds you well, and food.

“Food, food, food. You’re always thinking about food” said English – and that was before she found out about la sobremesa. But for Spanish, food is a ritual which grounds us and reconnects us to our roots even when there’s an email waiting to be replied to.

Holland celebrates the importance of food with a nod to her mother’s tortilla recipe and before you ask – yes, she adds an onion. The bite-sized pieces she handed out towards the end of the play were a very special touch and far more exciting than the reduced ham and cheese sandwich I ate on the walk from the station.

Chop-chop! is as physically funny as it is rhetorically. The staging was simple but highly effective. Her choice of props, from the toy laptop she uses to an exceptionally long to-do list, which included stop Brexit and buy leeks, had the audience in hysterics for the full 60 minutes.

The way Holland continued to break the fourth wall for the duration of the play was exceptional. It’s not always easy to pull off but Holland managed to get it just right so that the audience felt more like guests than spectators. She knew names; played Charades with Veronica; and crafted a very cute, green balloon dog for someone else, which was all done in a way that felt completely natural rather than forced.

And while Chop-chop! acts as a powerful love letter to bilingualism, it also serves as a powerful reminder that life should be less I hope this email finds you well and more I hope you find yourself.

You don’t need to be an Hispanophile nor bilingual to enjoy Chop-chop!, but you do need to go and see it when you get the opportunity. I am certain there will be plenty of opportunities next year because if one thing is guaranteed: 2025 va a ser su año.

Maggie John