4 Faces of Love

Dinner Theatre is alive and kicking at Slide in Sydney’s Oxford Street, in an integrated evening of four short plays, with a specially themed three-course degustation meal and cocktails.

The intimate venue, an art deco former banking chamber, is a delightful piece of architectural recycling. The food, three courses (with optional dessert), is excellent.

Congratulations to producer Stephen Carnell for including challenging choices amongst the dramatic fare. There is no happily ever after face in these Four Faces of Love - even in the comedies you get obsession and a lively single v married tug-of-war.

Food first. For entrée, it’s Sweet Love with a Kick - Blue swimmer crab cake with avacado-habanero salsa.

For theatrical openers, in The Doris Day Collection two film queens, waiting for the aging Doris’s weekly arrival at her regular vegetarian restaurant, bicker over film trivia, particularly her leading men. Plans unfold to add the ultimate trophy to an extensive collection of Doris Day memorabilia.

Musical choices for the show have been inspired by the title of this first play, and the fact that Melinda Schneider has recently released a Doris Day album. Consequently, on opening night, Melinda Schneider provided the musical entrée live. Sadly subsequent audiences will have to settle for the recorded version.

Food again. Light and Brittle Love – Double baked three cheeses soufflé.

Of the four theatrical courses, the comic bookends are easily the most digestible and more tightly staged. In the two intervening plays, dark themes of serial infanticide and abusive betrayal of trust, the meatier part of the night, still need a little work in the ‘plating up’.

Bye, Bye Baby, the dark drama of a serial baby killer, is two intersecting monologues – a mother who has killed her four babies, with a second woman who starts as reader of the woman’s memoir (or is it a script), being drawn deeper and deeper in, also enacting the husband and eventually becoming a sort of alter ego (or is it, as I later read on the flyer, an actor struggling to understand the many facets of a mother’s love). The performances were strong, but direction could offer greater clarity and focus.

Main degustation course. Fertile Love – Poached spring chicken supreme with tarragon mousse and pomegranate seeds.

Mummy’s Boy deals with the evening’s most pressing issues, deception and the abusive betrayal of trust, as a footie coach uses a mum to get to her son. But this part of the evening needs the greatest tightening and attention to focus, high on the list being over-extended simulated anal sex.

Dessert, optional, is a choice of Passionate Love or Love to Share.

Sushi Wushi Woo, the theatrical dessert, truly kept the best for last, as two actresses explored the virtues of married v single in a delightfully orchestrated, smartly played piece of theatrical wordplay.

As a degustation of food and theatre, Four Faces of Love certainly has me wanting more of the dinner theatre genre.

Neil Litchfield

Image: Libby Fleming & Renee Lim in Sushi Wushi Woo -