IT COSTS nuffin and you leave with a muffin. Now that’s what I call good value for a theatre show.

York St John University alumnus Sam Lawrence returned to her former training patch on Tuesday for two performances of her latest body of work: a dance-theatre creation that she describes as a work-in-progress.

Much like the muffins, which are of the three-minute variety, not three minuscule muffins.

Offered a glass of water or orange juice on arrival in the foyer, we are enticed through the red velvet curtains by the siren voice of the dark-glassed Maggi Stratford, recreating the role of the ‘spieler’ as she sings She’s Only A Bird In A Gilded Cage and welcomes you by torchlight to the magical and mysterious world Venus Viola and her aforementioned wonder muffins.

Inspiration for Lawrence’s Venus has come from two sources: her fascination with long-gone circus sideshow freak-shows and her work on her own body, a dancer’s frame newly buffed with muscles.

Those two elements entwine in a cookery demonstration that goes where Fanny, Delia and Nigella have never ventured with a spatula.

To the ever-so sweet accompaniment of The Chordettes’ Mr Sandman and country birdsong, Venus Viola, the domestic goddess in Fifties pink floral dress and blue gingham apron, glides her demure, softly spoken way through her muffin recipe, inviting audience members to stir the ingredients and pass the bowl on. Stirring stuff indeed.

The twinkle in the eye, the rosy glow in the cheek and the graceful choreography all convey domestic contentment, even a dreamy moment for blissful contemplation mid-mixing. No time for that today in the Ramsay age of frantic cooking.

Just when you could have pictured Venus doing her “epicurean exploits” in the window of Cath Kidston, enter shattering modernity in the form of the microwave, the reason why Venus’s muffins need only three minutes.

What happens behind closed (microwave) doors is only half the story because suddenly Lawrence’s Venus strips off the prim veneer to reveal the body builder beneath: the freakshow transformation challenging our “expectations of femininity” as she struts and preens and poses in black bra and panties to Perez Prado’s Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White.

Ping! The double-chocolate muffins are ready and on goes the dress again, the fixed smile returns, the vision of perfection restored after the incongruity of Venus’s sudden sideshow. Humorously, vigorously, Lawrence challenges repressive domestic roles for women and unleashes the wild spirit within, once the apron is untied.

Mind you, eat too many of Venus’s muffins at the end and you might be body-building in a different way.

Lawrence intends to develop this devised 25-minute show for festival and platform performances in 2011/2012, but already she and Stratford have the recipe for success.

Venus Viola’s Three Minute Muffins, 103 Falling Birds, at Create 11 Festival, The Arts Workshop, York St John University, Tuesday.