Feeling hungry? ... Playwright David Greig. Photograph: Frank Baron
The appealingly alliterative A Play, A Pie and A Pint is a new season of work by theatre company Paines Plough. It's a series of four short plays staged in the atmospheric Shunt Vaults under London Bridge, where £10 buys you a ticket to the performance plus a pie and a drink of your choice (the pint part is not obligatory). The shows start at 6pm and none of the plays lasts longer than an hour, leaving you the majority of the evening to do with as you please.
First up is David Greig's sweet, strange comedy Being Norwegian, a scant sketch of a play, entertaining but on the slight side - yet well suited to this format. The remainder of the season includes work by Ché Walker, Sean Buckley and Rona Munro.
I had been expecting a cabaret-style arrangement complete with tables and chairs, but the reality was more does-what-it-says-on-the-tin. After filing through the long, moodily lit corridors of Shunt Vaults, we were herded into a small white-walled area where pies (a choice of beef and mushroom, if you're wondering) and drinks were doled out. The performance space itself was on the compact side, tucked away from the main sprawl of Shunt Vaults. The lack of space did lead to some drink juggling - somewhere to put your glass would have been nice - but Greig's slim two-hander requires an intimate setting: it would have been lost in a larger venue.
The ticket also allows you to stay on in the venue for the rest of the night, propping up the bar in the Shunt Lounge. The season is being marketed as the "perfect post-work prescription" and the thinking behind this is clear: a short play in a cool setting, booze included. It's affordable, informal and doesn't eat up your evening the way a night in the West End might. Of course, some of London's best fringe venues are attached to pubs, so this idea of mixing a post-work drink with a night at the theatre is not hugely original, but this bite-size approach takes it to a new level.
In theory the season sounds like an exciting way of opening up theatre to new audiences, in which the play becomes part of the fabric of the evening, rather than the main event. Though I admit I'm tempted to go back and sample some of the remaining productions, however, I'm not convinced that the format works as anything more than a novelty, something a bit different to do after you escape the office. Still, at the end of a fraught, busy week, when a few drinks can often seem more appealing than engaging your brain at the theatre, this allows you to do both. Should more theatre companies attempt to slide in around our lives in inventive ways, as this season is doing, or is A Play, A Pie and A Pint simply a gimmick that ends up diluting the theatrical experience?
