By Eavan Prenter
⭐️⭐️
I love going to see a brand-new play and finding a gem. Seeing a proven play by an established writer, with a director you know and a famous face or two in the cast is great and all, but nothing feels quite as good as hearing from a brand-new voice. I imagine it’s a bit like the rush that gamblers get when a big bet pays off, and like a gambler, that rush fuels me to roll the dice again on another unknown quantity. My latest dice roll is at the Omnibus Theatre and it has plenty of promising signs: an enigmatic title - The Society for New Cuisine (what could it mean?), an intriguing quote - “Have you ever seen a caterpillar eat?”, a successful Edinburgh Fringe run, and an undeniably exciting new voice from Chris Fung, but will the odds be in my favour?
First impressions bode well: Yimei Zhao’s ominous smoke-filled set, littered with office furniture, lights, microphones and other technical equipment is unlike anything I’ve seen before, and the tension is ratcheted up even further by Jamie Lu’s oppressive soundscape, a thudding heartbeat I can practically feel in my chest. From this murky backdrop emerges a man. Writer and solo performer Chris Fung fills the space with his presence and does an excellent job of bringing the audience into his world. At odds with his surroundings, he seems fairly grounded. Pressured by his parents and frustrated by his work, he has a dry sense of humour and a loveable but awkward charm, but it’s unclear where his story is going, or even where it is now.
The narrative jumps suddenly from the story of his relationship with Beth to his relationship with another woman, Sylvie, to fragments of his past, a mysterious medicinal clinic and then to facts about animals. If you’re confused, then you’re not alone. Billed as a Buddhist-inspired fable about an isolated man trying to move through a world-shattering breakup, it’s formally inventive, a spiralling narrative matching the man’s slow descent. Whilst structurally clever, it lacked an anchor, I struggled to invest in the character and his development. To feel the man’s pain at the loss of Beth, I needed to see the love, the joy and the story of their relationship, but it’s difficult to find those things among all the tangents.
Fung is a highly capable and talented performer. He propels the story along whilst also creating a whole universe with on-stage sound and lighting effects. He uses voice distortion to give colour to different characters, standing lamps as interrogation tools and ghost-story-torches. The seamlessness of these transitions is a testament to the design team (Zhao, Lu and lighting designer Rajiv Pattani) as well as Rupert Hands’ direction. However, as the play progresses, the intense glaring of the lights pointed right at the audience sadly becomes a distraction, and towards the end, Fung’s performance slips into a lot of shouting. This is a real shame as his quiet intensity was so captivating when used at other points in the piece.
The play takes a look at some really interesting material: grief, men’s mental health, capitalism and the cultural weight of parental pressure often found in first/second-generation immigrant families. The form of the play sadly served as a distraction from the fascinating work rumbling away underneath the play, as opposed to elevating it. For an audience that enjoys sinking their teeth into something structurally complex, get stuck in there, sadly for me, I was at a loss.
Even the storylines I followed led in strange and often aggravating directions. Voicemail recordings from the man’s parents are used throughout the play to shatter the action. Fung builds this up, with the tone of the messages becoming increasingly sad, desperate and angry, but the payoff never arrives! I left the Omnibus Theatre feeling frustrated. This is a top-notch creative team with an original and bold new play, there’s some serious talent in the room, unfortunately, The Society for New Cuisine had so many of the right ingredients, but the end result just didn’t quite come together.
Photos by Kenny Kung