←Recommendations of Don't Touch The Carrot Cake

EMILY MCCLAIN is a gifted playwright and it’s always a pleasure to read her work. I must say that her ten-minute play, “Don’t Touch The Carrot Cake”, does take-the-cake. In a contest for baking, three competitors try their best to make something from nothing. In an hilarious satire, we are witness to the baking of the special ingredients of humor, pathos, and - well, you need to read this fun play to find out.

McClain dishes out some truths in this wild and wooly competition. Yes, there are guaranteed laughs with great roles for women and an absolutely delectable ending. But the play will not only entertain but give you some food for thought to mull over in the coming days.

Funny and delightful ten-minute play about an unusual baking competition. With four super-fun roles for women and a surprise ending, this would be a hit in any short play festival.

"Don't Touch the Carrot Cake" offers a fresh perspective on baking competitions, blending humor with a substantial amount of absurdity. The final twist may be challenging to accomplish but should result in a satisfying conclusion.

Rules are rules. And audiences are in for a ton of laughs as three baking contestants try to follow the rules and create the best carrot cake. Zany, original, and with an ending just begging for a creative team to figure out how to pull it off. Emily McClain takes the cake with this one!

I, for one, would be curious to see how Paul Hollywood makes it through Drusilla Wollingsworth's gauntlet. It's hard to talk about this play without spoiling its gloriously absurd, "surprising twist." I will attempt to do so, but rest assured, McClain has outdone herself. This is a riotous short play, one gleefully and knowingly satirizing reality TV and mayhap our competitive society at large. Baking is supposed to be fun! Right?! We often mention how much fun it would be to see a play live. Let's say this one has a special secret ingredient.

This would be hilarious on stage. Imagine Lucy and Ethel under the pressure of a competition acting out making invisible cakes with invisible ingredients and invisible equipment and you get an idea of the possibilities Emily McClain has set up for her actors. The final coup de gras will be tricky to carry off, but if successful it'll bring down the house. "Don't Touch the Carrot Cake" is a very tasty concoction indeed.

This absurdist bake-off yields a delightful layer cake of a play. Imagine if Kafka watched The Food Network, or Albee was a fan of Mary Berry—then you might get something that comes close to DON’T TOUCH THE CARROT CAKE. However, Emily McClain goes a step beyond disorienting surrealism with a slyly, subtly feminist cri de coeur: why are the expectations placed on women so ridiculous? Why do we pretend they’re not? Are we all participating in a game that’s impossible to win?

This is a delicious satire of baking competitions and the ways women are set up to unnecessarily compete with one another. The four characters are well-defined and well-differentiated, the set up and execution sparkle, and the dialogue is witty and true to each character. All-in-all a most engaging confection.

The Mount Pleasant Baking Competition is a strange game. The only winning recipe is not to play.

There's definitely a message here in this delightful short comedy. Perhaps it's that you should be careful what hoops you jump through on your path to glory. Sometimes, the only prize for acting like an idiot is getting to look like an idiot. Or, at least, that's what I got out of it. Apart from its worth as a satire, Don't Touch the Carrot Cake is brimming with humor and wit and would be a solid standout in an evening of comedic one-acts.