In the debut play by East-Asian writer and performer Chris Fung, a man with questions following a break-up discovers a group who seem to have all the answers. The Society for New Cuisine, directed by Rupert Hands, is a Buddhist inspired folk fable about power, masculinity and heartbreak that makes its London debut this month at Omnibus Theatre following an Edinburgh Fringe run last year.
Ahead of opening, we caught up with Fung, who also stars, to find out more about the play.
Chris Fung on The Society for New Cuisine
What can you tell us about The Society for New Cuisine?
I started writing this when I was in the Original West End cast of Disney’s Frozen with my Resident Director Alex Sims. I took him some poetic chicken scratchings and asked if I had a play. He said ‘mebbe’, and we started putting a script together before rehearsals at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
I was fascinated by this story about an Epicurean society – a wealthy group of Black Market fine food enjoyers, who meet in a nondescript restaurant every few years to sample the world’s rarest meats – it begins with standard definitions of exotic: Zebra, horse, dolphin, then quickly veers off into a more expansive direction: phoenix, ifrit, banshee.
I was going through a break-up, and mixed this EATING story with Tibetan Buddhism and ‘Old Boy’, and ‘The Woman in Black’, and Dennis Kelly and Tim Crouch, and Sarah Kane, and The Watchmen.
When I had done a bunch of writing, I grabbed some mates from Frozen, ran a workshop, invited producers, and now 3 years later we’ve got this production at the Omnibus directed by my friend Rupert Hands, longtime associate of Jamie Lloyd, with a killer design team, and a fistful of dreams.
What originally inspired you to write the play?
I had this image in my head of perforated paper. It was a big technical advance for printing to stamp PINHOLES into paper, so you could precision rip a page, and I remembered this documentary about Antarctic ice-shelves calving, where these giant ice blocks would look all beautiful and pristine on the outside, but on the inside, be all full of holes, black and dark, as the ice had been freezing and re-freezing and thawing for decades – centuries. This ice is heavy. Heavy as a continent. Heavy as heartbreak, and then one day it no longer holds together, and like perforated paper rips disastrously. CHURNING the sea. TOSSING the landscape.
That’s how I felt.
I was distraught on the tube going into work each day. Then I’d have to put it back in the box, and go onstage, in my beautiful shining costume, wearing my beautiful shining face, to sing LET IT GO to 2000 thunder-hearted infants.
How much has it changed during the development period?
Enormously! My team and I initially took this to EdFringe in 2023, and we started developing this in 2022, so it’s grown a lot in 3 years. We initially had some great critical and artistic responses at the Fringe, and since, we’ve kept working on getting it sharper and sharper.
Rupert Hands is a world-class creative. He has experience resident and associate directing the most widely recognised theatre makers in dynamic and hugely impactful theatre. Sunset Boulevard starring Nicole Scherzinger, Sir Ian McKellen in King Lear, James McAvoy in the celebrated Cyrano de Bergerac – Rupert has a TONNE of stories and productions in his dreaming mind, productions he has hand-shaped alongside Jamie Lloyd and the JLC – a company many view as one of the most innovative and exciting in the world.
It’s a privilege and pleasure to be making work with Rupert now, to see the turnings of his artistry, to note how our aesthetics clash and conjoin and diverge. We have plans for productions that extend past SFNC!
Is it daunting to star in a production that you have written?
Absolutely! There ain’t no one to blame but me.
It’s wild that I’ve spent such a long time thinking with a writer’s brain which is primarily about MACRO world-building and structure and an interrogation that stretches to the horizon. It’s all I’ve been doing for 3 years. Now having to switch to being an actor, the work is so much more visceral and micro. I gotta figure out how to make this dance and live, in my body, voice, and thoughts.
How do I strip away my dishonesty to be as daringly human as I am able?
I’m so lucky to have a collaborator I trust in Rupert.
Is there anything you hope audiences take away from the show?
I hope they find an element of themselves in it. This is a dynamic piece. My team have worked on the West End, and at the National Theatre, and on Broadway. I think that there’s something special about theatre on the Fringe – there’s a certain kind of daring that can only exist here.
This is the ecology that gave birth to Fleabag and Six and Baby Reindeer. It gave us Operation Mincemeat and Hamilton and The Woman in Black. This ecology allows for ‘different’ before it becomes ‘of course’.
This is a piece made by a brightly hearted TEAM of humans who have invested a great deal of LIFE into making a play that we believe in.
I hope that we leave you thinking. I hope that we leave you wondering.
The Society for New Cuisine is at Omnibus Theatre, London, from 19 March to 5 April 2025
