Are you upper, middle or lower class? Or, perhaps more importantly,
which do you think would be most fun? Duckie, those delightful
Olivier-Award winning entertainment anarchists, demand that you
consider your social mobility and buy a ticket, valid for one glorious
Christmas dinner, accordingly.
For £14.99, the lower classes
get carvery 'n' karaoke; £40 secures four courses of silver service,
which of course befitted your reviewer from London's quality newspaper.
Welcome to adult-style festive entertainment, where the only thing
behind you is a whole wealth of status anxiety.
The Class Club
does, of course, make for a terribly knowing evening. For starters - or
should I say for canapés? - audience members are invited to dress up or
down as their selection dictates.
What a deliciously decadent
night's theatre it made to don a little black dress and sup champagne
and nibbles, before sitting down to smoked salmon, roast pheasant,
figgy pudding and cheese and biscuits, all served by actors playing the
waiting staff. Chef Tom Norrington-Davies, who devised the menus, has
done his diners proud.
Indubitably, the working class has most
fun in Vito Rocco and Mark Whitelaw's exuberant production. With paper
hats and raffle prizes, that side of the dividing curtain -
tantalisingly one hears, rather than sees, the other orders for much of
the performance - certainly had the kneesuppiest time. The poor old
middle class looked glum in its gastro pub.
Amid all the
performer-led carousing, there is, of course, the unsettling sensation
that our own lives, preconceptions and modes of behaviour are the real
stars of the evening, that we, as well as the actors, work daily from a
script that we probably had no hand in writing. Quite the jolliest,
most thought-provoking and, yes, classiest December outing.
