So much of the experience of fine dining comes down to the theatre: exquisitely convoluted descriptions of the food, the slightly prissy matching of the select wines, the sheer drama of the plating. So when playwright Nick Parr and chef Rob Kabboord introduce actual theatre to their three-course meal at the Lincoln Arms in Carlton – renamed Gourmandise for the evening – it feels more like a natural extension of a culinary idea than a radical mashup. It’s surprising how easily digestible it is.
The diners/audience enter the stylish space just as they would any contemporary Melbourne restaurant, seated by a maitre d’ and served an amuse bouche – in this case, a supremely delicate cigar of salmon pate shot through with plump pink caviar – with a glass of NV Holly’s Garden überbrut from the Whitlands Plateau in Victoria.
The only hint something unusual might be about to occur is the deliberate gaps in the seating plan; the central table for 12 has only six of us pottered around it, as if the tardier guests are yet to arrive.
Thoughts of the darkly satirical film The Menu are difficult to shake (I make a mental note to pass on dessert, in case I get turned into one!) but when chef Max Mortimer (Aaron Campbell) enters, his debonair looks and calm demeanour put us at ease. His partner Ellie (Sophia Davey) helps him prepare dishes, and it soon becomes clear that she is not just his supporter and muse but the real brains behind the cooking. If only he’d ease up on the cocaine.
Soon those other guests do arrive, three couples who inject different energies into the room. First up is Max’s younger sister, Johanna (Elise Jansen), and her struggling artist boyfriend, Lawrence (Darcy Kent). Next is Max’s former business partner Paul (Damian Walshe-Howling) and his wife, Samantha (Michelle Myers). Finally, ostentatiously successful proctologist Derek (Brett Cousins, who also directs) and his bored but glamorous wife, Rebecca (Claudia Greenstone), make their entrance and the dinner proper can begin.
We learn some key things about this group early into the meal, while other facts only dawn on us in time. There’s been a recent, still-raw funeral that has touched the entire group in ways that initially seem unclear. Max has ascended to the highest ranks of celebrity at the expense of some of the friends present and tonight he’s closing the restaurant for good, gathering his best friends together for the final meal. As the evening wears on, secrets will be exposed, past indiscretions raked over and long-held resentments aired. And some truly astonishing food will be served.
A roasted king brown mushroom consommé with a hay chawanmushi and a square of nori so crunchy it could be sold as a packet of chips, is paired with a 2022 Eastern Peake chardonnay. The main is a mouthwateringly tender Wagyu with some black mushroom cream and lovage (apparently a southern European herb, like parsley but spicier), paired with a 2019 Syrahmi “egg” Mourvèdre from Heathcote.
And the dessert – served after the play has concluded so we don’t get too distracted from the drama – is a Dirty Nellie, Kabboord’s play on Peach Melba. It’s incredibly textured, creamy and complex, paired perfectly with a “Melbourne negroni”.
Parr and Cousins have set themselves an unenviable task, creating a credible and compelling drama using a performance style of hyper-naturalism around a genuinely impressive three-course meal. The play has to allow for explosive emotional outbursts and sharply delineated characters, at such close proximity to the audience that the slightest false note could tip the show into camp. Every actor has to convince, and they do – even if some are slightly more convincing than others.
Myers is the show’s gold standard; her deeply empathic portrait of a steadfast wife quietly raging at the margins of her own life is so plausible that watching her feels like eavesdropping. Walshe-Howling has to do the most yelling, but he’s never less than magnetic and persuasive. Jensen is composed on the one hand and anxious on the other, her personal trauma convincingly underplayed and Kent is suitably droll and wary as the one person who doesn’t quite belong.
Parr’s ambitions here are not quite Chekhovian – the characters’ existential ennui isn’t deep enough for that, their foibles not idiosyncratic enough for Chekhov’s level of poignancy – but he absolutely nails the tension in the atmosphere, and has terrific fun poking at Melbournian pretensions and class signifiers. The script reminded me most of Helen Garner’s screenplay for The Last Days of Chez Nous – discursive and playful, erudite in an offhand way but astute and insightful.
The performance register is masterly and Cousins controls the ebb and flow of conversation with great skill. It really does feel like being at a particularly rowdy private dinner party, indulgent but also heaps of fun. The play’s interrogation of desire, its relationship to notions of success and purpose, dovetails neatly with the extravagance of the meal itself. No one eats like this because they’re hungry, and while Max claims that “food can bring people together”, this kind of dining is also deliberately exclusive. It’s all rather uncomfortable, but yes, I will have another glass of that Mourvèdre, thanks. It pairs so well with the lovage.
Gluttony is on at the Lincoln Arms, Carlton until 24 March
