Home › Reviews › A Dinner to Die For

A Dinner to Die For

K.E. Weber's picture
Submitted by K.E. Weber on Sunday, 3rd Apr 2011
TP Rating: 
0
Reviewer: 
Date of Show: 
Saturday, 2nd April 2011 (All day)
Venue: 
Retreat Hotel Abbotsford

A Dinner To Die For, darlings!

 
 
A Dinner To Die For is a two-and-a-half hour murder mystery feast, complete with raucous sing-alongs and enough sexual innuendo to make Julian Clary clutch at his pearls. But of course I, Dora Dodsworth, a writer for the most fashionable newspaper column of the 1920s, Homes Today, have no idea what is going to happen. I've been invited to Lord Daventry's birthday party, and can only hope that the unmentionable events of last year's party aren't mirrored tonight.
 
Upon arrival at The Retreat Hotel (eager to tell you at every turn that it was the set for The Sullivans), it was easy to distinguish who was there for a pint and who was there to see the show. A week or so prior to our arrival we'd been sent emails with our character profiles and a link to the Dinner To Die For website, which encouraged us to dress in period-appropriate clothing and play our characters "as much or as little as [we] like" (a hint, though --you'll have a great deal more fun if you play them up as much as you can), and some people had definitely gone all out. While I'm not sure that bright pink was a fashionable hair colour in the 20s, nearly every woman had a bob or pin curls, and the men were dressed to the nines, cummerbunds and all.
 
We were greeted by Roger the Butler -- just one man in a long line of characters with naughty names (if you chose to think carefully on them), who handed us our slightly anachronistic plastic nametags, and sent us to mill about with the rest of the audience. Too soon, though, dinner was to be served, and we were invited to climb the stairs (a little difficult for some of the ladies and their heels, but everyone did manage in the end) to Lord Daventry's dining room, where we were met with the sights and sounds of the 20s. The Lord himself was tinkling away on the piano, while all of his guests took in the atmosphere of the admittedly rather cramped environment, normally the pub's function room.
 
My unfortunate first meeting was with Uncle Bernie, described on the website as "a lecherous gentleman", who kissed my hand gallantly and then refused to let go, instead spinning me in order to take quite an obvious gander at my backside. An interesting start, to say the least. Once everyone was seated the show proper began, with a marriage proposal and the stealing of a ring, and a bonking of the butler from behind. The audience wasn't expected to participate, but it was highly encouraged, and as the show moved on and Gwendella Garavinah arrived to sit at our table, I found it hard to resist falling into my role.
 
The food was surprisingly good for a dinner theatre performance (probably because the pub specialised in the highly period-authentic meat pies and chicken parmas we were served) but the real entertainment came from the in-character conversations with the actors stationed at our tables, and of course the sing-alongs and intervening silliness between meals. As the night progressed, darling Fanny smeared lipstick across not only her lips, but the lips of the Captain and Lord Daventry himself, leading to a somewhat awkward conversation where they all talked about kissing one another.
 
Soon there had been murders aplenty, rumours of a psychopath from the nearby insane asylum on the loose, and a spiritual moment of hand-holding and chanting to the 'chalice from the palace' in the hopes that a freshly-murdered spirit would bring us clues about his or her murderer. The night ended with more gunshots and clutched pearls than Lord Daventry had hoped for, but, ever-optimistic, it was "still better than [his party] last year". As for me, it was better than the entirety of last year, with stunning improvisation from actors who are never quite sure what the audience are going to ask them about, especially while they're trying to wolf down a parma in time to be ready for their next scene, and an enthralling storyline told through elegantly-executed penis and vagina jokes and a gentle ohm.
State: 
VIC