Thanks to another fabulous gift from L for my birthday, I finally got to see Teatro ZinZanni's "Dinner & Dreams." I'm pleased to report that this "blend of European cirque, cabaret, spectacle, music, and culinary magic" is worth every penny of its ticket price. I blogged about ZinZanni back in May when I first stumbled across their permanent location in downtown Seattle, and have wanted to go ever since.
The evening as a whole can only be described as fun, luxurious, and damned entertaining. The individual acts between dinner courses only occasionally exceeded expectations, but the non-stop levity never ceases to serve a good time. The sheer novelty will be enough for most people to rave about it to their friends and coworkers the next morning. As an emulation of the burlesque it's rather tame, but the show's mainstream qualities only do it good: any further out and it'd risk alienating unsuspecting Seattleites, a dangerous proposition with something as intimate as interactive dinner theater.
My program lacked a proper cast list of the evening, but this old Seattle Times article drops some names: Madame Mable Dean (actor Kevin Kent in luscious drag) does a masterful job of hosting the show and making sure everybody has a good time. A 6-foot-plus Austrian woman (Manuela Horn) transforms, with a little help from other characters, from antithetical disciplinarian to sex queen, and finally around again to, um, Disciplinarian. A diva sings opera favorites and helps to introduce each course. Before the show, a cute, rather quiet woman climbed under our table to steal one of the shoes off of the guy sitting next to me, then returned later to spoon-feed him the soup course, and again just before the entreé to sell him back his shoe for $2. She also did an excellent big top acrobatic rope routine. All characters (each with distinct material but names difficult to catch) get equal stage time to demostrate multiple talents, musical, rhythmic, and physical. They wander about doing table acts during the food service portions of the evening; everything is exceptionally well timed to let you eat comfortably and enjoy every aspect of the show.
There are probably some people who wouldn't enjoy this sort of thing, but if you're only a little weirded out by the above descriptions and not all-out offended, rest assured the audience handling is top notch and never really goes too far. Indeed, anyone who enjoys this sort of thing might think they don't go far enough.
It's just too exciting to have a permanent cabaret dinner theater in my home town. It's priced for special occasions, but if you're looking for something more interesting than the Space Needle to entertain guests, or just want to kick someone's birthday up a notch, Teatro ZinZanni is not to be missed. Reserve your seats early; they sold out months in advance last Spring and Summer, and we could only get Thursday tickets with several weeks' notice (though see the article linked below). Our waiter promised that the show will undergo major content changes this Spring. The first ZinZanni show, "Love, Chaos & Dinner," is still playing in San Francisco. They also appear to do special shows on some holidays; we just missed a $200/ticket New Years gala.
This recent Seattle Times article on ZinZanni raves about the show and discusses its popularity, as well as the difficulties of big ticket entertainment in a down economy. One Reel has yet to recoup its initial $1 million investment in "Dinner & Dreams". They intend to continue the run through 2003, the San Francisco show as well. The article also mentions that the amazing chocolate dessert you get at the end was a tweak to the show made after the original dessert received lackluster reviews.
Updated: Aurelia Cats wrote me to say that she does a trapeze and contortionist act and not a rope act, as I had originally listed here. I'm sorry to say that not only was Aurelia not working that night, but I don't have a proper attribution for the acrobat who was. Oh well. It was a great show, and I'd like to give credit where it's due. :)
