If you think creating a play about airline food sounds perverse – like making a Nickelback musical – think again. ‘Gastronomic’, by experimental theatre-makers Curious Directive, offers its audience the chance to experience a seven-course pescatarian tasting menu; that is to say seven high-concept canapés you eat with your hands. The show is set aboard an Airbus A380, where the audience watches the three in-flight chefs prepare and serve the first-class menu.
Nora Schmidt (Georgina Strawson) has created the menu, a concept piece called ‘Green and Pleasant Landing’. The airline has insisted she make it British-themed, and the dishes are named things like Sherwood Forest, End of Brighton Pier and Bakewell Snow. But all is not as it seems. Hiding behind these kitschy monikers, Nora has created a menu imbued with personal memories.
This subtle and skilful undermining of expectations is a major feature of ‘Gastronomic’. You might walk in expecting the sort of impress-your-date theatre-adjacent immersive food experience that other companies do so well, which are not ‘about’ anything more than the experience. But inside the conceit, ‘Gastronomic’ also functions as a play – about Nora, her sous-chef and former lover Agat (Ani Nelson), and kitchen newbie Luca (Craig Hamilton); about a stowaway on board that Heathrow security are trying to track; about a romance ended by a sudden death; about the connections made by sharing food.
Each dish is served to audience members via a miniature version of the rollers that take baggage through security, and the final course is delivered inside a locked piece of luggage – it’s a fun engagement with the immersive element.
A much-fêted ‘augmented reality’ facet of the show failed to work on press night, and as its absence did not detract from the performance at all, I wonder how necessary or boundary-pushing it actually was.
‘Gastronomic’ has been supported by the National Theatre Immersive Storytelling Studio, and can be considered a success on that score, in that it uses unconventional techniques to engage audience members with a story. It’s a surprisingly thoughtful venture in a genre overcrowded with cynical marketing and by-the-book thrills.