‘Witches’ casts fun spell at TNT

By Milan Paurich

NILES — If you’re going through cutthroat kitchen rivalry withdrawal now that Bravo’s sublime “Top Chef” has concluded its season – and if the “Chop” ripoff shows (“Chopping Block” and “Chopped”) simply aren’t, er, cutting it – Trumbull New Theatre’s “The Kitchen Witches” might have the recipe you’re craving.

The high-energy production that opened Friday night to an SRO crowd at the cozily intimate TNT Playhouse in Niles has more than enough chef-on-chef backstabbing and culinary disasters to fill an entire season’s worth of “Hell’s Kitchen.” It’s also a lot more fun.

Directed by the estimable Christopher Fidram of Youngstown Playhouse and Oakland Center for the Arts fame, “Witches” is the sort of high-concept crowd pleaser that’s the bread-and-butter of regional community theaters. Although “Witches” scenarist Caroline Smith is hardly in the same league as Moliere or Feydeau (heck, she’s not even a female Neil Simon), her play has such an enviable – and irresistible – can’t-miss premise that you hardly notice just how lacking in genuine wit or sophistication it is.

Set against the backdrop of a cable cooking show hosted by arch rivals Dolly Biddle (Denise Sculli) and Isobel Lomax (Crystal Niemi), “The Kitchen Witches” plays like an extended episode of the old “Mary Tyler Moore Show” if Sue Ann Nivens and Phyllis Lindstrom had somehow replaced Mary and Rhoda as the leads.

Dolly and Isabel’s “Martha Stewart Meets Jerry Springer”-type program becomes an overnight ratings smash, and the hyper-competitive “divas of cuisine” cause no end of problems for their long-suffering director Stephen (Fidram). The fact that Stephen also happens to be Dolly’s adoptive son only adds spice to an already roiling stew of simmering resentments and petty jealousies.

Smith’s work has an oddly misshapen quality at times. The exposition-heavy first act feels a tad overlong while Act 2 breezes merrily along until screeching to a somewhat abrupt halt. Furthermore, no one will ever accuse Smith of having a particularly light touch with the one-liners (“I’m working with Emeril La-Gassy” one witch complains after her compatriot comes down with a case of indigestion). Yet, Fidram somehow manages to turn Smith’s sow’s ear of a play into a gourmet snack thanks to adroit pacing and some terrifically engaging performances.

Sculli (so memorable as Annie Wilkes in Fidram’s Oakland production of “Misery” two years ago) is a total delight, never more so than when assuming the persona of kitchen wench “Babchka” at the beginning of Act 1. With a Ukrainian accent as thick as a pot of borscht, the side-splitting Sculli brought down the house with her “Borat”-worthy malapropisms. In fact, she’s so delicious as Babchka that it’s almost a letdown when the character is ditched in favor of “Dolly.”

If Niemi lacks Sculli’s go-for-broke, force-of-nature bravura – and had some problems with her lines on opening night – she’s still an amusing comic foil.

And Fidram really nails the role of punching bag Stephen. His barbed asides to the “studio” audience between takes provide some of the evening’s biggest laughs. (Fidram’s double – or is that triple? – take reaction when Niemi/Lomax shares a shocking personal revelation at the end of Act One is beautifully timed.)

As “background color” on the “Kitchen Witches” set, Ben Gavitt, Clyde Holmes and Art Smallsreed provide a fair share of chuckles in virtually nonexistent roles.

The local references interjected into the script (North Lima, Howland and Leetonia all get shoutouts) seemed to tickle the audience, and Cary Brant’s attractive set design nicely establishes the TV studio ambience. Kudos to the yeoman TNT staff for mounting a slickly, stylishly packaged production that doesn’t skimp on the details.

X“The Kitchen Witches” runs through March 29 at Trumbull New Theatre in Niles. For tickets and additional information, call 330-652-1103.