The Slide Cabaret and Bar, a chic inner city theatre restaurant venue, normally home to the cabaret set has branched out to put on ‘4Play’, a season of short plays especially for Mardi Gras. A Blancmange production, ‘4Play’ is a show offering a package of five vignettes performed during breaks from partaking in the sublime French cuisine.

The result is a lively night of theatre with the playwrights’ inspirations arising from very different ideas. All five plays are alike in that in each play the writer approaches their theme from a very different tangent.

Before the food and wine and vignettes, the evening began with a witty musical number ‘4Play’, stylishly delivered by David McAmis, featuring the punchline, ‘a good night of loving starts with a bit of foreplay’- hence the pun for the show’s title!

Of the five plays, Jerome Parisse’s ‘For The Love Of Men’ was the most original work. The premise; a man dies, and gets the chance to come back again. The only catch is that he is told that this time he’s coming back gay! How does he react?!…Director Danielle O’Keefe plays it mainly for the laughs. ‘For The Love Of Men’ features Donna Brooks, David Buckley, Peter Talmacs and Nathaniel Scotcher.

Rick Viede’s ‘Road Kill’ was the most substantial piece dramatically. There’s a car accident, the man and woman involved have an incendiary encounter, as a result of the man’s ravaged psyche. Kate Gaul, one of Sydney’s leading theatre directors, helmed the production, starring Fleur Beaupert and David Lucas.

Steamy gay bath houses usually mean ‘meat markets’. David McAmis’s ‘Bathhouse Blues’, that includes a plaintive ballad, focuses on a man who wants love and affection rather than a quickie. Deborah Jones directs, and Dennis Clements, Andrew Ferguson and Kim Knuckey star.

Peter Talmacs’s witty comedy ‘Reason 42 (Why Gay Boys Leave Home’) starts with a teenage boy telling his parents that he is gay. The response of his parents is very off-centre, but that is only the beginning of it…Dominic Stone directs, and Jamie Harding, Kim Knuckey and Diana McLean star.

Daniel Hayward ‘Mummy’s Boy’, whose play ‘Parkie’ had a successful season at the Tap Gallery last year, features a school football coach who is the object of affection of both the student and his mother! David Koumans directs and Matthew Hopkins, Aaron Nilan and Amanda Stephens-Lee star.

‘4Play’ plays the Slide Cabaret and Bar at 41 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst until the 3rd March.