We've been reviewed! "In the Eye of the Menu"

When the Menu Strikes, Make Sure You’re in the Eye
The Bad Musical Theatre Team reviews the latest production from Bemused Production Absurdities.

It seems that Bemused Production Absurdities and their corporate sponsors, the Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company, have finally hit their theatrical stride with “In the Eye of the Menu”.

Purporting to be the sequel to the somewhat interesting and at least well-attended “The Cafeteria of the Mind”, “In the Eye of the Menu” stands alone as an outstanding work of theatre.

“Menu”, on the face of it, does not appear to have a lot to offer. The tale of the trials and tribulations of a furniture salesman as he searches for the perfect restaurant with which to impress his long-distance girl could strike as either deathless soap opera or a molar-grinding foray into gritty, but at bottom commonplace, realism. “Menu” manages to sidestep both of these extremes quite nicely and present a cast of well written, if occasionally derivative, characters interacting on a backdrop of several eating establishments.

The storyline is fairly simple – boy has girl, but they cannot be together, boy marks time until girl can return. Nothing really happens – and yet everything does. Borrowing heavily from several sources, including Shakespeare’s “low” touches in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Beckett (of course, Waiting for Godot) and, surprisingly, Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove to name a few, “Menu” brings a fresh look to the search for perfection to impress the ones we love, including touches of the bizarre throughout.

These include the salesman’s head office pushing xylene-softened cornflakes to replace upholstery, the singing of furniture at unexpected moments and the wonderful Iva Tycoon as the utterly mad-confused-and-confusing customer who absolutely cannot make a decision, who resolutely pops up in every restaurant our hero tries. These odd ornaments to the main story serve to introduce and maintain a motif of levity in the midst of what would otherwise be mundane drama. The comic touches occasionally venture into dark humour, and yet the overwhelming feel is one of the general lightness that people, in this set of diners at least, use to carry them through their lives – the good, the bad, and the in-between.

Despite the somewhat manic billing for “Menu”, the play presents as straight drama, riffs of humour and homage-laden subplots notwithstanding. One suspects that the subplots are the main reason for the production. Homage they may be, they are nevertheless skilfully and cheekily done – there is a soupçon of Mellors’ final letter that ends D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the way Egan Ham portrays his relationship with his unnamed girl. Indeed the billing is the one sour note in the entire experience that “In the Eye of the Menu” presents its audience.

In final analysis, there really is very little in the way of plot – one has the sense that the writer (who is as yet unidentified – as with most the BPA/DFT work) wrote as if riding a go-cart with hands off the controls and eyes shut yelling “WHEEEEE!” as it hurtled down a hill. Nevertheless, “In the Eye of the Menu” offers a rich exploration of humanity and human beings, even with such a small canvas as this.

Our rating: A