THEATRE REVIEW: DINNER by The Black Swan Theatre Company

Shane | 20 March 2015 | Reply

THEATRE REVIEW: DINNER by The Black Swan Theatre Company
State Theatre Centre of Western Australia
Tuesday, 17 March, 2015
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
9/10

You’ve heard of a drawing room comedy, well here’s a dining room play.

Paige (Tasma Walton) is throwing a dinner party to celebrate husband Lars (Steve Turner)’s latest self-help book release, and dysfunction is the order of the day for their guests.

Trippy hippy Wynne (Alison Van Reeken) arrives sans her politician husband and puts Paige out again by audaciously being vegetarian.

Hal (Greg McNeil) has left Paige’s best friend and married newsreader Sian (Rebecca Davis), and a seemingly random van driver/would be burglar Mike (Stuart Halusz) has a prang in the fog and is drafted in to make up the numbers after asking to use the phone.

More of a love scribble than a love triangle, Paige plays tonsil hockey with her waiter (Kenneth Ransom) while Lars and Wynne do the same, whilst Hal & Sian are having an icy time in their own relationship.

“We need drinks!” Paige repeatedly says, and with Lars declaring that she “comes from the Cruella DeVille charm school” who can blame her. Sardonic and cruel of wit, it transpires that she has laid on the party for her own selfishly shocking agenda. No-one is safe from her cruelty – not any of her guests, certainly not her husband, not the live lobsters she serves for main course, and not even herself.

Dinner is a brilliantly written story full of sharp wit and black comedy, and a tour de force for the actors, all of whom deliver superbly enjoyable performances.

There’s some fiery language and lots of laughs, but at an hour forty five without a break it was us who needed drinks – and a toilet break – before the end.