Stage Review - 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche
Presented By: Pony World Theatre - Seattle, WA
Show Run: October 22 - November 14, 2026
Date Reviewed: Sunday, November 08, 2026
Run Time: 80 Minutes (no intermission)
Reviewed by: Greg Heilman
Growing up in the 1970s, I spent plenty of time in buildings that still looked much as they must have in the 1950s, before their color palettes were changed to the mustards, olives, and other more “modern” colors of the time. Church basements and Grange halls had their linoleum floors, their painted cinder-block walls, and a set of drapes that somebody had once picked out with great care. As soon as I walked into Pony World Theatre’s 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, directed by Kate Jaeger and on stage at Seattle’s 12th Avenue Arts through November 14, I felt like I was being transported directly back into some of those spaces. Teia O’Malley’s scenic design gets the blue and beige walls, the patterned floor, and the little raised stage right down to the feeling of the place. When the room is described in the play as a “newly remodeled community center,” I could almost picture somebody in one of those halls I grew up with saying the same thing.
It’s 1956 in this play, and in it the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein has gathered for its annual quiche competition. The society has a founding story involving wild chickens and a bounty of eggs, a theme song that is both hilarious and very well sung, and a motto that covers just about everything its members consider important. “No men, no meat, all manners.” To that point, a sausage quiche is enough to cause genuine outrage, which gives some indication of how seriously the members take the rules and how much fun playwrights Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood have with the things they leave unsaid. When an apparent disaster interrupts the meeting, the women find themselves with more pressing matters to discuss, including how loosely the society has been using the word “widows.”
Kate brings the audience into the meeting early, lightening the mood straight away. Erin Michele Gabbard comes onstage as Veronica “Vern” Schultz and starts talking with people, finding some funny bits of improv in the process. The back-and-forth with an audience member dubbed “Marjorie” is especially good. Emily Huntingford, who plays Dale Prist at the performance I attended, is always on the lookout for a photo opportunity, and that gives her a reason to turn her attention to the audience even as the business of the meeting carries on. Those exchanges make the room feel like it belongs to everyone in it. By the time a quiche causes a scandal, the audience has had enough time among the members to understand why it matters so much to them.
Megan Huynh is hilarious as Ginny Cadbury, who comes from Manchester and takes care to see that gossip gets its place on the agenda. There’s something especially funny about the way Megan delivers a line when Ginny is being perfectly serious about something so silly, and her English accent is very well done. Marianna de Fazio gets one of the biggest laughs for me as Wren Robin simply by taking the first bite of the winning quiche, though Megan’s voracity in attacking the quiche in question may be the absolute funniest bit of physical comedy in the show. Finally, Lisa Viertel gives society president Lulie Stanwyck the sort of forceful presence that makes it easy to see how this group has kept its traditions going. Amy LaZerte’s costumes help establish the group’s sense of propriety, with Vern the sole exception to an otherwise unbroken line of skirts. The ensemble is a group that works extremely well together, delivering the dark comedy that was written into the play, with quick exchanges and the right amount of individual quirkiness. And hats off to them, and especially Emily Huntingford, it’s always a treat to see an understudy performance in an ensemble piece that feels natural.
On the creative side, Annie Liu’s lighting and Andi Villegas’s sound give the apparent disaster enough weight to change the mood in the room. The comedy gets darker from there, and some of the funniest moments come as the women try to reconcile what they’re learning about one another with rules that seemed perfectly sensible to them a few minutes earlier. The innuendo is so plentiful in the first part of the play that there’s a pleasure in hearing the women finally say aloud what they’ve spent all that time talking around.
Having all of this happening in a room that reminds me of the places I grew up going to seems fitting. Those halls were built for people to get together, and anyone who spent much time in one knew there were things people felt comfortable saying in front of the group and things they saved for the conversation afterward. In Pony World Theatre’s production, the women spend so much time worrying about what goes into a quiche that it takes an emergency for them to find out what they can tell one another and still belong in the room.
In Pony World Theatre’s 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, a sausage quiche is a scandal, a society theme song is worth singing with conviction, and an audience member named “Marjorie” can find herself part of the proceedings. Kate Jaeger and her cast have a wonderful time with the rules and rituals of this 1956 gathering, which makes it all the funnier when an emergency gives these supposedly well-mannered widows a reason to say what they’ve been talking around all afternoon. It’s a sharp, dark comedy about the things people do to belong and the pleasure of finding out how much they can say aloud and still have a place in the room and it makes for an extremely fun time at the theatre.
The Pony World Theatre presentation of 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche runs onstage at 12th Avenue Arts in Seattle through November 14. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.ponyworld.org/.
Photo credit: Brett Love
