In this first monograph, Athéna-Hélène Stourna explores the ancient relationship between the theatre and food and drink, with a focus on the most relevant evolutions that have taken place since the late nineteenth century. Hence La cuisine à la scène attempts to enlighten the meanings behind the friction of the notions of stage/spectacle/performance and kitchen/cooking/consumption – the French terminology (scène and cuisine) covering all of these in the volume. Food as a ‘stage object’ is considered for both its symbolic and its concrete signification, with individual and social effects (p. 15). The action itself of eating and drinking further leads to the concepts of pleasure and biology, of social identity, communication and otherness. Finally, the performance of the meal, onstage as well as in the auditorium, points to the physicality of the culinary realm and its representation by the choices of mise en scène. These lines of enquiry confront the reader with either textual or performance analysis, or both, on a journey that extends from France to the rest of Europe and the Americas.

To address these notions, the author has developed four chapters. The initial look at real food onstage examines the innovations brought forth by André Antoine before shifting to a study of Anton Chekhov's food realism in the hands of Konstantin Stanislavski and more contemporary directors. The archival research serves the account well with illustrations of food in the first naturalist performances. The second part opens more widely on the twentieth century to observe dramaturgies as diverse as August Strindberg’s, Arnold Wesker's or Michel Vinaver's in their rapports with food, its locus and its functions. Stourna's analysis of three productions of Wesker's The Kitchen could have been complemented by that of Roots, where food was cooked onstage, to engage dialectically with an author who offers in performance rich and varied representations of food as a major signifier in his theatre. Furthermore, Stourna worked on the French translation, which brings her to conclusions about Wesker's play – especially the relationship between Arabs and Jews – that can only be sustained with difficulty as they are absent from the English version (p. 136). From this wide survey of ‘real’ food, the author steps back chronologically to view food as a metaphor – the symbolism of Jarry's Ubu Rex working as a central focus – to the avant-garde practices of the Bread and Puppet Theater. This chapter on food as an aesthetic medium provides a synthesis of the realms of ‘theatre’ and ‘performance’. The final chapter centres on contemporary practices in their political and social dimensions.

The volume proposes interesting questions and whets the appetite of the reader. However, despite the potential for an innovative and up-to-date study of food onstage, the arguments too often fall short and remain at a descriptive level in a narrative that is too fragmented for comfort. The thesis might have been too ambitious, spanning centuries and geographies without adequately justifying this scope, and lacking in theoretical criticism. The reader also suffers from the consequence of insufficient proofreading. This is unfortunate as this is a subject that deserves the interest that Stourna is rightly trying to elicit and is successful in delivering in sections of the book.