Title: The Greatest Snowman

Style: immersive dining

Where: Pedley Street Station, Bethnal Green

To note: make them aware of food allergies, preferences etc.

3.5/5 stars

The Greatest Snowman is enormous – if slightly confusing – fun.

Played pretty much as a straight up pantomime, it come across as charmingly childlike and simple. The storyline is not taxing, and the immersive element was less prominent than in recent production by the same team Journey to the Underworld.

The food was just as delicious though. And what made this production considerably less child-friendly was the copiously flowing booze. Not that this reviewer is complaining about that! But it does make for a slight sense of dichotomy. This is a show I think my nephew and niece would enjoy, in an atmosphere I probably wouldn’t bring them to.

The scene is set by the conductor Doris (Ingrid Miller – whose performance owes more than a little to Su Pollard in Hi Di Hi) who welcomes us and flogs us Babysham (which is just as grim as you remember it being). There is then a battle for the spirit of Christmas embodied in the life and backstory of Mr Snow (Chris Heaney) – a human raised as the last of the snow people.

This is a silly romp and a highly enjoyable one. Much of your enjoyment does come from the others at your table as when the food is served the action is paused. We had a delightful bunch and were well looked after. No part of this experience is left much to chance.

Afterwards, we spent time in the lovely Christmas grotto themed bar – I highly recommend the gingerbread based cocktails.

Overall this is a great, fun, lighthearted night out. The food is way above average and the ambience is a delight. Once again this is not theatre that will change your life, but it will give you a rollicking good time. Just watch out for the morning after!

Title: Divine Proportions

Style: immersive dining

Where: The Vaults, Waterloo

When: Until 12th January

To note: make them aware of food allergies etc.

3/5 stars

Divine Proportions promises much and almost – almost – delivers.

The party atmosphere is apparent from the beginning. Audience members are encouraged to dress decadently and buy further glitter on arrival.

The music is classic hen night decadence and performed brilliantly in the downstairs bar by the cast who writhe with appropriate abandon. In fact, the downstairs bar action is by far the highlight of the show.

The problem with the main action is partly one of the venue and partly one of the production.

In terms of the venue, there is no sound amplification in the parts of the room furthest from the stage. Given the open inducement to get raucously drunk and the Saturday night crowd’s absolute willingness to do so (our party was no exception), we couldn’t really hear a lot of what was going on.

The venue was very full and as such the action on the night was very much dependent on who you were sat with or next to. I went with one other person and we were surrounded and somewhat overwhelmed by much larger groups. To avoid that, I would recommend smaller groups go during the week.

Divine Proportions had a pretty high innuendo threshold and there were some genuinely sexy moments to behold. The worshipfulness of the Maenads towards Dionysus was well played in particular. A slight bugbear of mine is that for a show all about the worship of all things flesh – all the flesh was very much female. No man-candy to behold. While most of the time an all-female cast would be held to be radical, and certainly Dionysus’s empowered sexuality was an exemplary performance of a woman – or even a goddess – at home in her own body. But to have an all-female cast at this kind of show felt almost reactionary. Women for looking at and encouraging the audience to eat drink and be very, very merry.

Divine Proportions is a fun night out. Not quite theatre, not quite burlesque, not quite vaudeville it is a decent meal with a floorshow you enjoy what you can catch of this. What I can’t tell is if it has pretensions to be more than that. if so, it should give those up and embrace its hen-night destiny.