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Tale of love and plate fails to stay the course
DINNER
Upstairs at the Gatehouse
PLAYS like Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, and Tony Grounds’ recently screened The Dinner Party, delight in ridiculing the nouveau riche.
Moira Buffini’s absurdist comedy, Dinner, targets the Guardian-reading intelligentsia.
The obnoxious Paige is throwing a dinner party to celebrate the publication of her husband Lars’ self-help book.
While Lars is happy to peddle his dippy brand of consumerist Buddhism, he shrinks from telling Paige of his desire to leave her.
Matters are not helped by the arrival of their first guest, Wynne, an insipid earth mother who clearly dotes on her self-regarding host.
Next up is Hal, a pathologically insecure scientist who’s brought along his latest trophy ‘partner’, the glacially beautiful newsreader, Sian.
Add to the mix an uninvited van driver and a chillingly efficient butler and you have a seriously volatile social cocktail.
But while the play boasts some good one-liners, it lacks shape. The characters, who mostly exist to represent various world views, are strictly two-dimensional beings. There is also a striking lack of character consistency. Why, for instance, does the imperious Sian suddenly become so lost and needy?
That said, director Alexander Holt coaxes some fine performances from his spirited cast, particularly Ava Burton as the endlessly anodyne Wynne. And Mike Lee’s set deserves special mention for its delicious vulgarity.
But when a bunch of animatronic lobsters can steal a show, you know the script has problems.
Until October 14
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