"Making A Meal Of It" by Your Chance Productions.
Bunkers Hill, Nottingham.

Here is a collection of funny pieces of theatre and TV sketches with one thread running through it. Food.

Now, what is clever as well is that as soon as you walk through the door upstairs at Bunkers Hill in Hockley, you are shown to your reserved table by your waiter and offered food. yes, food is included in the ticket price!

There are three sketches, seen on TV shows and three sketches from plays. the odd one out is a piece called "Whiskey Cake" which is all about making a cake with lots of whiskey tasting in between the recipe details. You can imagine the outcome!

"Why Cupid Came To Earls Court" is a one act play by Cosmo Hamilton and part of that play is performed in this showcase.

"Between Mouthfuls" is taken from Alan Ayckbourn's "Confusions" and is all about two couples who go to the same restaurant. The two couples, a boss and his employee and their respective other halves both have secrets which emerge throughout the stormy meal.

This is a farce and depends on the waiter being like a microphone between the two tables, so you only hear snippets of conversations. At times this didn't work as well as it could have done as the waiter was at times nowhere near the couple that were talking.

What I did like though about this was the way that it segued into the next "food" section which was from "The Importance Of Being Earnest" and is when Gwendolyn and Cicely first meet.

The segue includes the two waiters clearing the tables from "Mouthfuls" and setting up for "Earnest" and the banter while doing this. I found out later that this improvised.

New names blended with actors I'd had the pleasure of seeing previously and were all great fun to watch.

Christian Oliver-Bates, Glenn Edward-Estes, Algernon Wells, Thomas Keetley, Emily Wilkins, Madeline Walker, Jessica McLean, Philippa Buchanan and Sarah Astill gave us accents, characterisations and lashings of comedy to make a meal of, and like any good meal, left you wanting more.

Whoever's idea it was as well to give Algernon the part of Algernon in the final sketch ("Earnest") was a stroke of genius, especially when he was asked if his name was really Algernon.

Also letting Tom and Algernon do the improvised comedy segue was clever as it showcased their obvious improvised comic talents.

All of this in six weeks is pretty impressive stuff and a lot of thought has gone into collating these themed pieces.

A wonderful evening's entertainment performed by some naturally comic people.