British-Egyptian playwright-poet Sabrina Mahfouz’s monologue had its Sydney premiere on this stage a year ago. Second helpings are very much in order.

Our focus is a nameless Chef (played here again by Alice Birbara). She dreams big and well she might. In this kitchen – the whereabouts of which are revealed as the piece unfolds – the chances of her laying hands on the kind of ingredients she loves to work with (fresh peaches and hibiscus flowers; yellowtail sashimi) are zero. These days, a “calming” fried rice is the mandated limit of her culinary range.

Alice Birbara in Chef. Photo © Clare Hawley

Chef is related in chapter form. We learn that she started out as a restaurant reviewer before she fell into a relationship with a violent drug-dealer. She describes how her love of food eventually led her into the kitchen of a local restaurant and into mentorship of the kindly man who owned it.

That little kitchen became a refuge, her best shot for a future. She tells us of her love for its daily rhythms, its cleanliness, her appreciation of collective sense of mission. Most of all, she tells...