A student chef turned production stage manager hopes to trigger all five senses with the addition of restaurant aromas to an upcoming theatre production. During The Globe Theatre’s production of The Dinner Party next month, the audience should prepare to be teased with the smell of onions, garlic, red wine and savoury stock wafting through the show’s run-time. Stage manager Emily Gilbert, who is also in her last year of a bachelor of culinary arts degree at the Otago Polytechnic, will be brewing the broth. The production is set in the private dining room of an exclusive Parisian restaurant. Miss Gilbert’s broth is designed to transport the audience to France. “My plan is to have a slow cooker tucked in under the bench … just simmering slowly so it’s not super-strong.” She would also be making some hors d’oeuvres for the show. “There’s no meal on stage, but the audience can look at the food and go, ‘Oh, that smells delicious’.” Director Matt Brennan said in the show six apparent strangers — three women and three men — are invited to a dinner party held at the upmarket French restaurant La Cassette. All the men turn up first, and they realise that the one thing they have in common is a lawyer who worked on all three of their divorces. Their first thought was that their lawyer was going to be setting them up on a blind date with three eligible ladies. However, soon enough, all their ex-wives turn up instead. “It is a funny show, but it does go into some serious, thought-provoking stuff towards the end where makes you think about relationships and how people treat each other. “I think the audience should be left having had a lot of laughs, but also maybe thinking, ‘Hey, yeah, I remember something like that,’ or ‘I know that someone had that kind of experience’.” The show will open at the Globe Theatre on August 20, and will run until August 30. laine.priestley@odt.co.nz
