THEATRE REVIEW: May Contain Food ★★★★

May Contain Food

Wednesday 9th March 2016

Warwick Arts Centre

Imagine yourself walking into the auditorium of a theatre, where there are cabaret styled tables laid out around the space with all different types of food, artificial that is, placed upon these tables, and when entering you are escorted to your table, made up of around 8 seats, and given your own personal menu given by your personal waiter.

This is what Protein have done to their current touring production May Contain Food, almost more like an experience than a piece of theatre. Whilst waiting for the show to start, the waiters are constantly competing with each other whilst others are having heated conversations, and what's so unique about your experience is to choose which conversations you want to over hear and pay attention to.

Donna was our personal waitress on our table, and she came across as a very high headed woman, always believing that she was right. I loved everything about not just Donna, but all the other waiters; I thought it was extremely clever to have them on stage mingling with us whilst we we're all entering, it gave us a real experience and all their energy that they had was at top level all the way throughout the production.

The performance itself was a mixture of dance and acting, with, like a traditional restaurant and shown in our menus, we had a four course meal, with a Starter, Main, ‘Green’, and End, and the appetisers given to us within these interludes to the main event were something quite special and unique. For example, have you ever been asked to roll a tomato all over your face before then putting it in your mouth and chew 21 times before swallowing, or having to feed your neighbour next to you a ball of rice, because if you were to come and watch May Contain Food, you would be getting exactly that!

I thought the whole show was incredibly inventive and creative, and I loved every minute of it, because you never knew where it was going to go next throughout the whole performance, and it was one of a few productions that I would want to learn more about the whole process, from start to finish. Thoroughly enjoyable, I would recommend this to anyone, because it has something for everyone, no matter what age you are.