Feast of fun served with hint of cheese
Chef: Come Dine With Us (Assembly) Madcap mash-up
THERE are plenty of shows at the Fringe offering food for thought. So it makes a nice change to see a show providing plenty of food for fun.
And fun with a capital F is exactly what this madcap, mash-up from South Korea provides in spades.
But if the title has you thinking of coming along to pick up some cooking tips for your next dinner party, then think again. The show may be based around an interlinking foodie theme – two chefs, Red Chef and Green Chef, compete on stage in a culinary competition to outdo each other, with the winner picked by an audience member. But you should take that with a pinch of salt. No actual cooking takes place.
Rather, the winning ingredients are a smorgasbord of variety treats, rolled out at breakneck speed.
These included beatboxing, breakdancing, hilarious clowning, consummate slapstick, martial arts, opera, acrobatics and anything else the eightstrong cast manages to throw into the pot during what is surely the most anarchic, subversive, crowd-pleasing hour you’ll find at the Fringe.
Introduced to our Korean hosts the chefs, commis chefs and two beatboxers may not speak much English.
But the crowd have no problem understanding their talents for switching from the sublime – a beautifully choreographed underwater dream sequence – to the ridiculous – a dough fight with the audience which threatens to gleefully spill over into utter chaos. Entirely bonkers, resplendent with cheesy props and bursting at the seams with energetic invention, if it’s a feast of family entertainment you’re after then you really should put Chef at the top of your Fringe menu.
Assembly George Square, until Aug 29