Dinner is Swerved++++=

Dinner is Swerved++++=
Late Night Party Time
Last year, *3Dinner is Swerved *2was served in the dark, and the pleasure depended heavily on the nearest fellow guests not being monumental bores. The company, perhaps recognising this, have made this year's version brighter, with party games, meditation, genial interludes for conversation and a tighter focus on the audience experience.


Equal parts slumber party and spiritual retreat - the show begins with a spot of mindfulness - *3Dinner is Swerved*2's new incarnation is about fun and shifts of perception. A trippy video is followed by quiet time, then the appearance of a tree bemoaning environmental devastation. If the food is less important - although there is plenty of it - there is a beautiful 'naked lunch' moment when the audience feats on chocolate as the tree, behind a curtain, meets a chainsaw. A silliness makes this funny rather than disturbing - the crew have a light touch - but it marks an attempt to use the bonhomie created to consider serious matters.


Although there is plenty of performance, including a lullaby that turns into a nightmare and a complex ritual of earth worship, *3Dinner is Swerved*2 highlights the importance of the audience as co-creators in a production, encouraging play in the space and peppering the event with inspirational or funny perceptual twists. Gentle, warm and generous, it shares with Red Bastard is an insistence that everyone gets involved, without being quite so terrifying.


(Gareth K Vile)


C, 0845 260 1234, run ended

Like Gravy Trains? Get to the Fringe

Part of the magic of theatre is its ability to bring people together. Despite having an intrinsic distrust of UKIP (because of the immigration rhetoric and the general cod-libertarian capitalism of their policies), I feel that the Edinburgh Fringe might help mend the broken bridge of friendship between the arts and that bloke who got elected a couple of months ago (I can't remember his name - it's a bit early in the morning).

So, here's the first VileArts dedicated pick of the Fringe, especially for that bloke.


Bad Boys: Whisky Theatre
This is happening in Jenners, on Princes Street, in the food hall, so I am sure politicians who protest the European gravy train will have no problems finding it. Promising to be more than 'tartan and kilts,' it's got some whisky tasting bits, so that ought to set the audience up nicely for moving onto the next show, slightly pissed.

The Big Bite Size Breakfast Show
One to start the day at the Pleasance Dome: there will be some plays (three different menus of ten minute quickies) but there will also be coffee, croissants and strawberries. It starts at half ten, so if the previous day's whisky tasting went a bit wrong, he can still make it. It might also allow a bit of time to look up some of those dastardly regulations the EU has imposed on something or another.

Burger Van
Oddly, this is not happening on a grubby street corner but in the Phones 4U shop. I think he'd like this one, because it is in a shop - and I know you love the capitalism, I do - and it is all about the fast food trade. Those burger boys are in the vanguard fighting against the unnecessary hygiene regulations from those fat-cats in Brussels.

Dinner is Swerved
I went to this last year. You eat a meal in the dark. It has the added advantage that you don't have to look at the faces of your dinner companions, although I ended up sitting next to the most boring couple in the world. The food is fun and tasty - it is not really made out of horrible stuff, it is generally pasta with colourings - and I'm sure that the company comply with whatever laws you can't remember about how C Nova has to be presented.

Italia'n'Caledonia
This one turns up at Valvona & Crolla at most Fringes. It is the story of the two men who invented ice cream. Hang on - this might be difficult. They are successful business men but they are foreigns. Moral dilemma for UKIP ahoy...