Review: (Ottawa) Burnt at the Steak (Fringe)

Burnt at the Steak or 'The Best 10 Dollars You Will Ever Spend"

by David Currie

See Burnt at the Steak. Go see it, tonight.  Why are you still reading this, you should be watching Burnt at the Steak.  From the life experience of Carolann Valentino, comes the greatest musical comedy I have seen in years. This is a delightful play.  Every joke lands, you get to see song Parody at its finest.  This is why people like one woman shows.  This is a show with a very simple message “follow your dreams,” and it doesn’t feel trite in the least.

The story centers around Carolann’s life managing a very classy New York City Steak House.  She performs as 18 hilarious characters.  Her personality carries you through an exciting evening that has the audience laughing and looking around to make sure other people are laughing. She invites audience members to join her on stage and uses them in her stories.  The musical numbers are perfect, an exquisite use of musical theatre. They are all parodies and, again, the audience is invited to sing along. With titles like “No Nickers” and “Big Fat Daddy” it is hard not to.  Carolann only allows herself one moment to indulge in saccharine sentimentality and then quickly pulls back and ends the show by doing what she does best, tell jokes.

This is going to be the best show of the Fringe Festival, see it as soon as you can - so that you can see it a second time.

June 19 - 29

Review: Burnt at the Steak (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy


Carolann Valentino, Italian Rose of Texas, can handle anything. Sizzling from the word go, Burnt at the Steak flies us from the lone star state, on the premonitions of Carolann’s psychic mother, to her challenging day job in Manhattan’s highest grossing steakhouse where this motivated restaurant manager introduces us to her co-workers, her clients and her audience-recruited trainees, with ease and zeal.

Burnt at the Steak’s bare basic set, a table, some chairs, releases Valentino to use her greatest asset, her voice, with which a simple vocal shift and a change in the tilt of her engaging smile brings us a full cast of characters whose distinctiveness are clear even as they switch back and forth from line to line within the same song. As competent at nailing an audition and serving a performance piping hot as she is at putting out kitchen fires, this performer’s chops are juicy, and rare. No steak sauce required.

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