Dinner is Swerved

You probably already know if you'll like this show. If you salivate at the prospect of tasting weird and wonderful locally-sourced vegetarian concoctions sitting barefoot in a room draped with multicultural gap-year throws, meditating to the scent of joss sticks and hearing stories about little squirrels, you might even positively enjoy it. Cynics will struggle.

The evening is nominally a dinner, but while last year's offering from the company was a fine dining affair, this year they've gone for an approach that's somewhere between a woodland yoga retreat and your hippy friend's sixth birthday party. Two hours of relaxed storytelling, games and music give you a chance to get to know your nightcap-wearing audience members or, if you’re on message, new friends. The unifying principle is mindfulness: the calming, Eastern-inspired philosophy of concentrating closely on your surroundings and each inner sensation.

Our host Charlie Byles tells us to return to the state of toddlerdom. Compliance is essential, as activities involve reverentially examining a mangetout, playing pass the parcel with vegetables as prizes, and genuflecting to an altar manned by him dressed as a seven foot tree, offering a bucket of edible earth for sweet communion with nature.

The chef tonight musters up a further host of imaginatively presented dainties, inhabiting the gustatory space where Heston Blumenthal meets Hare Krishna. As we're told at the start of the evening, the Fringe can be a scary, tiring place. For a spoon-licking return to unjudgmental infancy, this could be just the meal ticket.

http://www.cthefestival.com/press/2014/dinner-is-swerved