WW Reviews

Come Dine With Me the Musical follows the producer Mary, played by Daniele Coombe, cameraman Roy, played by Tom Bowen, and sound man Teddy, played by Harry Chandler, who are trying to film the 1000^th episode of Come Dine With Me. If you don’t know the original reality show it pits four contestants against each other. They all must cook a three course meal for the other three contestants who then rank, out of ten, the meal they have received. The highest ranking contestant wins a cash prize.

The musical has a fun story with a particularly sweet romantic subplot whilst the main storyline follows the potential sabotage of the meals of three of the contestants. The show doesn’t have enough plot to make it longer. The music is nice but forgettable and whilst this doesn’t automatically make the music bad it doesn’t help the show to stand out. One of my favourite elements of the show was the excellent audience interaction before the performance started proper. It set up Mary, Roy and Teddy as characters and with such a short run time this helped the musical to skip lengthy song introductions which could be reintroduced as a way of expanding the musical. It also created the comedy tone for the show and established that we would be following behind the scenes of the reality show.

The musical was a great showcase for the talents of the cast but without more to the plot it will probably remain a fun but short musical which will play best at festivals.

Performance:
Tuesday 20th August 2024
14:20
Underbelly, Bristo Square – Cowbarn

Book and Lyrics by: Sam Norman

Music by: Aaron King

Directed by: Andrew Beckett

Cast: