The table is set, and a portion of the audience sit around it as guests at an intimate dinner party which will provide food for thought.
If we were to stare into the candle placed beneath the vast modernist chandelier and listen to the soothing tones of our host and waiter, it would be easy to fall into a trance. But it’s not that kind of show he assures us, before asking us to close our eyes to embark on a journey back to the last thing we ate, back to the womb and the beginning of life.
So starts this look at our relationship to what and how we eat. As people share memories of memorable meals our waiter starts serving wine and taking multiple orders for food that will arrive in ridiculous ways, highlighting the apparent shortcuts, the disconnects between the origin of the food and it suddenly appearing on your plate.
The sleight of hand intensifies as he finds the complex business of turning food into money exhausting and himself suddenly ravenous. All semblance to fine dining, the theatrical rituals that go with it are abandoned. Tricks allow him to slake his thirst and gorge on the leftovers in disturbing, astonishing, and amusing ways.
The transformation of the table into a magical tableau allows us to see a changing landscape from roaming herds to agrarian to modern industrial with its fast-paced supply chains and seemingly never-ending hunger for resources.
The piece continues the absurdist humour and placing of the audience at the centre of the work / people watching found in The Object Lesson and Home, each a larger meditation on what we need in life.
Similarly to Home it’s difficult to see how the audience are being manipulated to perform: as when one dinner guest apparently channels Sobelle to recite a long list moving from raw ingredients to processed products. The technical aspects and the deftly performed close-up illusions defy understanding and arouse wonderment.
It’s not a piece that rams its message down your throat, but it is not an entirely balanced meal either, feeling a little uneven in places and at the (recognised) mercy of audience participation. A wine tasting elicits no responses from those partaking and appears a missing course and a lost opportunity.
The immersive, strangely meditative, and rather lovely FOOD is satiating, leaving an aftertaste of either comfort or disquiet, depending on what you take away.
Show Times: 3 – 27 (not 7, 14,21) August 2023 at 8pm. Matinee 12, 19, 26 at 2pm. (10 captioned, 12 and 23 BSL interpreted, 22 audio described)
Tickets: from £35
Suitability: This performance contains haze, loud noise, and bright flashing light.