Dinner And A Show: Lookingglass' Cascabel Amazing Escapist Fare

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 29, 2012 4:00PM

Lindsey Noel Whiting, Rick Bayless and Tony Hernandez in Lookingglass Theatre's Cascabel. (Photo Credit: Sean Williams)

Cascabel, Lookingglass Theatre's foray into dinner theater featuring the cooking of Rick Bayless, is one of those events that succeeds because, as the saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As a standalone play, it may not be worth its ticket price. As a three-course dinner—even prepared by Bayless—it certainly isn't.

Combine the two, however, and add the amazing set design by Brian Bembridge and some astonishing circus feats, and you have two hours of the most joyful and mesmerizing theater we've seen in Chicago in quite some time. Cascabel is escapist fantasy at its finest.

The play, written by Bayless with Lookinglass' Tony Hernandez and Heidi Stillman, owes a huge debt to Laura Esquivel's 1989 novel Like Water for Chocolate in spirit. Bayless, playing a cook at a 1940s Mexican boarding house whose food drives the libidos of its employees and guests into overdrive, isn't required to do much heavy lifting outside of preparing the meal in time for the rest of the cast to eat in concert with the audience. (Which is a feat in itself. Bayless said after Tuesday night's performance he only rehearsed cooking during the play a handful of times. "It's very fast-paced, and making sure each of the dishes is ready at their specific point in the play requires some timing.")

The Cook spends most of the play trying to get the owner of the boarding house, Senora (Chiara Mangiameli), to eat in an attempt to snap her from her years-long mourning of a lost love. While she ignores the Cook's attempts and fends off the advances of a suitor (an oily Thomas J. Cox), the Cook's cuisine finds welcome receptions with everyone else, including the audience.

The food serves as the most obvious breakdown of the wall between stage and audience, but Bembridge's set design extends beyond. Communal tables on the main floor extend the boarding house courtyard design past the stage, making the audience as much a part of the play, at different moments.

The cast also does its part to blur the lines. The Maitre D' (Jesse Perez) serves as narrator, Greek chorus and as an actual maitre d' as he implores the audience to engage in "inhalational inspirations" before biting into a tuna ceviche served atop passionfruit and wrapped in a banana leaf, surrounded by popcorn to give a crunchy twist of texture. A gardener (Jonathan Taylor) and his wife (Anne Goldmann) begin Cascabel's second act with an anarchist energy, throwing rolls into the audience, performing hilarious mouth-juggling with bites of banana and even picking an unsuspecting audience member—me, during Tuesday night's performance—in a riotous serenade of "Besame Mucho" involving grapes.

The food in the play also serves as launching pads for amazing acrobatic feats like a chandelier turned trapeze by the Senora's daughter (Lindsey Noel Whiting) and the houseboy (Tony Hernandez), Hernandez's tightrope act where he changes out of soiled clothing and into his dinner uniform, a breathtaking balancing act in a bathtub by a bather in a fuschia bathing suit (contortionist Alexandra Pivaral), and an athletic, twisting pas de deux by two solitary travelers (Nicolas Besnard and Shenea Booth), spurred by bites of the Cook's mole and roast beef tenderloin. Throughout the play, Las Guitaras de Espana's Carlo Basile's guitar playing provides a seamless soundtrack.

Cascabel's story isn't strong enough to be a play in itself. But it serves as the foundation for the feats of strength and the food; the mole and tenderloin, served with black bean tamale and braised black kale, is vintage Bayless. Combined, the magic of Cascabel envelops the audience in a spell of enchantment.

Rick Bayless in Cascabel: Dinner, Daring, Desire has been extended at Lookingglass Theatre (821 N. Michigan Ave.) through April 29. Tickets cost $200-$275 and are available for purchase online or by calling Lookingglass' box office at 312-337-0665.