Deep Fried Cheese

Playwright and director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp's story centers on the rocky relationship between competitive eater Peter and his over-analyzing girlfriend, Megan. The play is at its best when it balances its sharp humor with heartfelt emotions. Megan's post-cocaine confession of how watching Hotel Rwanda made her feel like she hasn't accomplished anything in this world brutally captures the navel-gazing of the hyper-self-aware 20-something while also touching on the emptiness we've all felt in our darker hours. But the satiric edge that made the evening so engaging and entertaining falls away in the last third of the play. We're left watching a well-intentioned young couple battling their life crises and trying to figure out if what they've got is worth holding on to. The sincerity undermines the incisive and often damn-funny insights into human nature that Ingersoll-Thorp has found in the universe of competitive eaters and those who love them. In the end, this inaugural production from Sleepwalkers Theatre has a refreshing air of youth and vigor, but ultimately it promises more than it delivers.