Are you looking for a charming, quirky theatre experience?! Then the work being put out by the Dinner with a View theatre company may just be what you’re looking for.
Earlier this year this innovative local theatre company founded a theatre venue in a most unlikely place. The Company is using the main hall area of the Paddington Markets with the permission of the Paddington Uniting Church. They transform the hall, which they rename as the Eastside Arts Café for the occasion, into a dinner theatre venue each Saturday after the market closes.
Dinner with a View’s first season was an entertaining series of short plays under the umbrella title, ‘A Taste Sensation’. Their current production is a revival of Polish absurdist playwright and philosopher, Witold Gombrowicz’s 1938 play. ‘Princess Ivona’.
Prince Phillip is a bored, spoilt, impulsive young man of blue blood. He feels stifled by his very conservative life and family. and is looking for a way to break out. He finds it when he comes across an ugly, non-communicative, disturbing young woman Ivona.
The Prince is strangely drawn to Ivona and on a whim, and in a rebellious mood, he proposes to her. He is well aware of the furore he will generate. His parents, King Ignatius and Queen Margaret, are beside themselves with anger over his petulant action.
The story to ‘Princess Ivona’ brought to mind radical German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s masterly film ‘Fear Eats The Soul’, where a youngish Arabic man begins an affair with a lonely, elderly German woman. In both stories, the main characters bear the same traits, being impulsive and ultimately spineless.
Gombrowicz’s satiric play, shining a light on human fickleness and willfulness, turned out to be an engaging choice for Dinner with a View’s second season. The show went down well as one enjoyed the relaxed dining experience. There was a good choice of antipasto meals and wines to purchase from the bar area, and the seating was nice and close to the stage.
David Farland directed the play, performed in four acts with two intervals, with a focus on the playwright’s light but sure touch. A feature of the production was that the actors were heavily made up, care of great work by graduates from Sydney’s Make-Up Effects Group (M.E.G). Aron Dosiak’s costume designs were suitably expressive.
The cast gave relaxed, clear performances. In the lead, Kim Dickson was strong as the irresponsible, flippant and ultimately destructive Prince Philip. Justine Keim was suitably enigmatic as Ivona, the least likely woman to become a princess, in a very physical performance. Brett Heath and Brooke Doherty impressed as the Prince’s superficial, highly strong parents.
Recommended, David Farland’s production of Gombrowicz’s ‘Priness Ivona’ plays the Eastside Arts Café (395 Oxford Street, Paddington- Paddington Markets) each Saturday evening, except for Saturday 25th September, 2010, until Saturday 9th October, 2010. The doors open at 7.45pm with the show starting at 8.30pm.
