Reader Reviews
Dinner (Wyndham's Theatre, West End)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | Worth it just for the serving of the lobsters choreographed to Siegfried's Funeral March (will ENO's Twilight of the Gods manage such style!) Otherwise a very classily acted evening, albeit of a serioualy stereotyped script. - USER: Whatsonstage.com (128.40.79.243) | 22 Mar 04 |
| Undoubtedly original and creative, with great peformances, but this is not West End show. I suspect it was a lot better at the Loft - it's rather lost at the Wyndhams. - USER: Whatsonstage.com (172.145.145.110) | 28 Jan 04 |
| This is a pointless boring hopeless mess. Harriet Walters is wasted and looks like she knows it. The cast look embarrassed at having to play out this piffle to the bitter end.I bet they are counting down the days so they can wipe it off their CVs. We stayed to the end but it really was not worth it. It makes a few feeble dated points about the futility of life - but none intrigue or lead to anything very much. It also uses tedious stereo types - the miserable portrayal of a working class type contrasted with the rich makes your teeth go on edge. There was a poor audience there on the Friday night that we went and rightly so. - USER: Whatsonstage.com (62.253.215.25) | 09 Jan 04 |
| This is a play that starts off brilliantly, fizzing with snappy dialogue but runs out of steam after about half an hour. It starts to sag after the arrival of Paul Kaye's Mike, the uninvited guest (and that's no reflection on the actor) who heralds a lot of jokes about the working class, which were tired 20 years ago. Mike's character adds nothing to the interaction of the characters and the play only picks up again in the last five minutes, with its genuinely shocking finale. There are is brilliant acting however, Harriet Walter (who seems incapable of giving a bad performance)is a deliciously spiteful Paige, Nicholas Farrell and Penny Downie shine in their parts too. In fact, the whole cast is pretty damn good. For all its faults, Dinner is better than most West End efforts and while it's never going to be a modern classic, there's enough talent on display to make this a good night out. - USER: Whatsonstage.com (213.120.117.40) | 01 Jan 04 |
| Magnificently acted. Harriet Walter plays the hostess who dares to treat her guests and the whole dinner party culture with contempt. This is a fantasy feast of wit, humiliation and, even if it does have shadows of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, it is at least original. A delight to see a new play. It's not a perfect script but it has energy and was a fascinating evening of entertainment. - USER: Whatsonstage.com (62.252.0.6) | 31 Dec 03 |
| It was a feast of good acting, hence the generous two stars. That aside this is a play that gorges on its own self-importance. A comedy with something to say? Well, there's nothing here that hasn't been said more mordently and more subtly elsewhere by a hundred playwrights from Alan Ayckbourn to Yasmina Reza. Many of the gags are from the standard telly sitcom back catalogue ('...some stupid witch on a bike rode out in front of me...', says one character in the presence of the 'witch' herself. It's that level of sophistication). The hip use of auld Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is embarrassingly tacked on throughout, as are cheap laughs gained simply by peppering the script with apparently witty references to Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsey and Nigella Lawson. I had gone in hoping to see a comic allegorical satire; what I got was a self-conscious, laboured, sub-'Art' mess. Job - USER: Whatsonstage.com (213.48.4.2) | 31 Dec 03 |
| A thoroughly fascinating evening. A novel slant on the traditional dinner party enlivened by some brilliant bitchy and witty lines. The performances are first rate and although there are laughs aplenty there is also plenty to think about. A refreshing entertainment. - USER: Whatsonstage.com (62.252.0.6) | 17 Dec 03 |
| I found the whole show pretty disjointed and disapointing, what was happpening and what the dialogue was trying to convey did not gel together well so you were left wondering whether the writer and director were in touch. The philosophical argument; simple ideas on self-belief, self centeredness and self-preservation on which the show was based was served up in a bland manner no interesting or grabbing counter arguments were made although there was the odd attempt Some scenes were totally pointless especially the how to kill list. £18 is way too much for this drivel. Save your money and hire the movies The Last Supper or Twelve Angry Men - USER: Whatsonstage.com (212.56.109.153) | 14 Dec 03 |
