A small basement room in Waterloo, with bare brick walls and a simple lighting rig was the venue for Causa: The Trial of the Illegal Potato, one of the many shows in this year’s Lambeth Fringe Festival. The first hint that this show wasn’t going to be a tightly put-together piece came as the audience waited outside as the start time came and went with no information on what was happening. Starting nearly twenty minutes late wasn’t an auspicious opening.
Juana, a Peruvian woman living in London, gets homesick for Causa, a traditional potato dish. When she realises that the yellow potatoes she needs to make it aren’t available in the UK, she tracks down someone who can get her a seed potato so that she can grow her own, precipitating an ecological disaster.
Described as an ‘absurdity courtroom comedy…blending migration politics, ecology and cultural identity’, the writer really wants you to get the point, so they make every effort to tell you what it is, rather than using any craft to show you. The English judge and lawyer being unable to pronounce Causa or Juana’s name happened constantly throughout the 40 minute show, along with frequent negative comments about foreigners changing things in Britain. The dialogue was about as subtle as a sledgehammer and the direction did nothing to alleviate it. The neighbour who reports Juana to the police is depicted as an anti-social, lightsaber-wielding nerd for no good reason, simply reinforcing the lack of subtlety in this play.
The good points were some decent performances from Juana (Betsy Loza) and Sammy Attalah who played six different parts, and had a lit of work to do. His characterisation of a potato seller, a drug smuggler and a restauranteur were particularly good, but it felt like he was running out of steam towards the end of the play. Against this was a song and dance number from someone dressed as a giant potato, which interrupted the proceedings, providing the absurd part of the show’s description. The defence lawyer (Cameron Krogh Stone – also the director) who had theatrical ambitions served little purpose and came across as an in-joke that wasn’t funny.
The frustrating thing was that this show had a lot of potential. Something as simple as a potato becoming a metaphor for current attitudes to immigration is a good basis for a comedic look at the state of Britain in 2026. But the interesting premise was bogged down by tropes and stereotypes that gave the overall feeling of watching a GCSE drama project.
The show is also playing on the 26th of September and the Lambeth Fringe Festival runs until the 25th of October at venues around South London. A full list of events and information on how to book tickets are available here:
https://lambethfringe.com/events
Reviewer: Charlotte Mansfield
Reviewed: 25th September 2026
