It's a truism that everyone is middle
class these days... but not, I recommend, one to be observed at
performance collective Duckie's latest Christmas supper show. Here you
get what you pay for, karmically as well as financially. The
£14.99 proles in Lower Class (of whom I was one) get a carvery
dinner, a cash bar and Carla the brassy hostess, who jollies you along
through the meal and the naff tribute acts. For £40, your seat in
Upper Class comes with silver service meal and operetta-singing waiters
and waitresses. But beware of the third way: the £25 Middle
Classes receive a worthy but unexciting, faux-world-cuisine menu and
"entertainment" consisting of phoney mediaeval poetry and bad modern
dance. And this is what we all aspire to?
As with Duckie's previous shows here, much of the evening's atmosphere
depends on one's willingness to get involved: not in the cringeworthy
audience-participation sense, but simply being prepared both to chat
with the folk at one's table and to banter with the performers –
directors Vito Rocco and Mark Whitelaw make sure there is no sense of
hierarchy or privilege between company and punters. I am generally shy
in these situations, and was more so since it appeared that most of my
fellow Lowers had come ready for a raucous, chav-tastic time. However,
once I realised that this was a period of licensed misrule and pitched
in, things eased up considerably.
This proved especially to be the case during the final third of the
evening, when the curtains dividing the various Classes were opened so
that we could all watch a succession of parodically class-based cabaret
acts on the tiny central stage. Frankly, it was my mates the yobs that
kept things alive. The Upper Classes were comfortable and approbatory
in a muted, brandied way, and... well, I am not by nature a malicious
person, but I felt more than a twinge of
Schadenfreude observing my
reviewing colleagues in Middle Class, whose responses ranged from
sheepish acquiescence to a stony refusal to yield an inch. Because the
experience is clearly so variable, it's hard to give an overall rating,
but my advice is: workers of the world, unite – you have nothing to
lose but your inhibitions!
Written for the Financial
Times.