Festive theatrical feasts serve audiences a slap-up dinner with their entertainment. But is what’s on stage as appetising as what’s on your plate?
I
n west London, a line of smartly dressed theatregoers on a street corner enter a building and walk back in time. We pass through tight lamp-lit corridors and arrive in a cavernous hall, with tables laid and lanterns dangling overhead. This is Charles Dickens’ parlour, where he has just finished writing A Christmas Carol, and it’s dinner time.
The Great Christmas Feast is an immersive production in which a three-course meal is served while a quicksilver Dickens (David Alwyn) narrates his ghost story about the perils of penny-pinching in the season of goodwill. Immersive theatre has evidently concocted a tasty festive offshoot that might suit those tired of watching yet another straight-up adaptation of the classic tale.
Versions of cabaret and interactive dinner theatre have long existed, including Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience, while Rebecca Frecknall’s West End staging of Cabaret offers food and drink packages for premium ticket holders at the Kit Kat Club. What has been notable in recent years is how sumptuous some site-specific productions are becoming, with an elaborate convergence of spectacle, story, music and food. They certainly solve the conundrum of when to eat dinner. Before a show usually seems too early, afterwards too late. “During” is the perfect solution, I think, as I enter this music-filled production, which is in its eighth year.
