An estranged daughter comes to know her late mother, a cookbook writer, through the recipes and cooking tools she left behind. Eat Dessert First is about how parents feed their children, not just with food, but with their own hopes and disappointments and absence. Throughout the play, the daughter comes to understand and reconcile with her mother by interacting with items she left behind and ultimately, comes to terms with her mother’s death and the relationship they had when she was alive.  

 

Content Warnings: Mild Adult Language

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Director’s Concept: 

This play deals with loss, grief, and reconciliation. Over the past year, many of us have dealt with loss in a variety of ways, ranging from a loss of an opportunity or vacation, all the way to the loss of a loved one. The play provides a picture of human connection despite human imperfections and faults. In a time of division nationally and for many, in personal relationships, reconciliation seems further away than ever. Eat Dessert First examines how to deal with this grief, recognize the hurt and through forgiveness and human similarities, somehow move on. 

 

Dramaturgy: 

Contextual Information from the Playwright, Dana Leslie Goldstein 

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"Not too long ago, my mother and I had the bittersweet experience of sorting through and emptying my grandmother’s apartment, where she had lived for about seventy years.  We found ledger books that contained notes to us.  The notes weren’t advice, like the notes in my play, and the books themselves weren’t cookbooks, but I had the distinct feeling that my grandmother was speaking to us from beyond death.  I love those notes.  Similarly, my sister-in-law, who is a very good cook, has the cookbooks of her own late mother.  Her mother didn’t write to her directly, but she did take notes in the margins, and my sister-in-law cherishes those cookbooks because of the notes.  Finally, the title of the play “Eat Dessert First” is a quote from the late mom of a very close friend.  She was a woman who said many funny, profound, and surprising things and was part of a generation who had to break from societal expectations to live as the feisty, political, and seemingly indomitable person she was meant to be.  She had been a cabaret singer and a city councilwoman, and everyone called her Hank.  She was inspirational.  I melded details from these three mother-daughter relationships, along with some fiction, to create the mother and daughter in the play."