In British playwright Moira Buffini’s play ‘Dinner’ an artist, scientist, and a news babe come to a dinner party arranged by the host, Paige. The hostess has prepared a feast to celebrate the publication of her husband’s latest pop psychology bestseller. As the dinner party in unfolds the unsuspecting guests bear witness to a devestating game of marital one-upmanship. As fog surrounds the house and Mike, a mysterious stranger, appears, an evening of surreal dishes, poisonous undercurrents and plentiful alcohol descends into the dinner party from hell.

‘Dinner’ was very dark, black comedy with a strong streak of theatre of absurd. The overwhelming sense that I got from the play was how dark and sininster a character Paige was . This was drilled home in Pete Nettell’s productions with Belinda Giblin strongly playing the Paige role. Paige was a bit of a monster and choreographs the whole dark event to the last grim detail.

One of the party tricks Paige devises is to choose a subject for each guest to talk about which unwittingly reveals and exposes them.

Barry Langrishe played Paige’s aggrieved husband, Lars, who during the play takes the fight to his wife, and tries to stand up to her. Langrishe delivered a powerful, charged performance.

Alice Livingstone played eccentric artist, Wynne. Her marriage to a leading politician has been falling apart, and she has been having an affair with Lars. Livingstone gives a suitably quirky and comic performance.

Noel Hodda played earnest micro-biologist Hal who during the course of the play finds out that his sophisticated girlfriend Sian, crisply played by Tenille Halliday, is pregnant.

As Mike, the young guy whose van has had an accident, and who turns up at Paige’s door, Johann Walraven gave one of the best performances of the night. This was an interesting role to play, with Mike at first claiming to be a local thief, but then admitting at the end that he was not quite that notorious and was simply the delivery man for a local cake shop.

John Freeman rounded out the cast as the Waiter. This was another quirky performance as his character played quite a dark and pivotal role, with Paige reinforcing this through the play.

‘Dinner’ was not really my cup of tea as far as plays go, but there was no doubting that this was quite a searing study of a toxic main character in action.