The new stage version of the 1976 film allows audience members to dine as the play takes place around them. We sent a restaurant reviewer to appraise the food – but he got too distracted by a staggering show
It’s common to describe the modern restaurant in the language of theatre: behold the deft performance of the chefs in their open kitchen; witness the exquisite set-dressing. All of this works, unless the restaurant is part of the performance. In the National Theatre’s stage version of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film Network, a select few of us have tables right on the stage. It’s no contest; theatre wins every time.
Early on, Howard Beale, the spittle-flecked messianic news anchor on the edge of a nervous breakdown played by Bryan Cranston, calls out the world’s “bullshit”. As he does so, a plate lands in front of me on the rubberised table, the better to deaden the sound. It barely registers. It’s something dark on a plate. Food? Who cares about that? I’m too busy gawping at the kinetic fury of one of the US’s greatest actors playing not just to the hundreds in the Lyttleton theatre, but to us up here in the midst of the ultimate TV dinner.
Related: Network review – Bryan Cranston is mad as hell in blazing staging of Oscar winner
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