Kate Owens's Cooking With Kathryn skewers church sexism in Soho show

In 2026 Kate Owens’s Cooking With Kathryn opens at the Soho Theatre in London, a comic take on sexism in the Christian church in which a Bible-belt woman hosts her late mother’s community cooking show. Owens was nominated for the best newcomer award at the Edinburgh Fringe for the piece and appears as a teasing, charismatic presence.

The show argues that Christian zealotry subjugates women and sets out Kathryn’s crisis — a tyrannical mother and a loveless life — very explicitly. Owens plays a recognisable type, a woman on the edge whose panic is barely concealed by too much makeup and a flashing smile, and the cookery workshops descend into slapstick, including an erotic egg-beating skit and a hastily improvised tinfoil bandage.

The performance takes a gross-out turn when the host must concoct and consume the unlovely "biblical brew" handed down by generations of Kathryns; she instead reaches for her preferred tipple, prompting what the review describes as "fine drunken acting" and broad physical comedy. The final 10 minutes are criticised for not delivering a fully earned climax: a so-so song about deviations from Christian chastity is followed by the mother being summoned from the grave to issue a "too neat absolution." Despite those reservations, the review praises Owens’s "deft clownish touch," which keeps sequences charged with possibility up to a concluding "deflowering ceremony" involving Kathryn, two punters and an ominous bedsheet.

Key Topics

Culture, Kate Owens, Soho Theatre, London, Edinburgh Fringe, Christian Church