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
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