Here's what Brendan Kiley had to say about last night's Jandek show over at Line Out, the Stranger's music blog: It was both haunting and boring—long, melancholy songs with a ghost of a folk-blues structure languishing at the bottom of an ocean of weird... [click to read more]

3 years ago, I was on tour in Nashville, TN. On Halloween, I performed 3 sets of improvisational dance with some local musicians in the attic of an abandoned maple syrup warehouse. There was an art gallery opening downstairs, and when I wasn’t dancing, I was drinking beer from a gigantic metal keg out of a plastic cup. A few days later, I found myself at a bar that one of the local musicians suggested I check out. The bar was called "The Bleeding Pig" or "The Skewered Hog" or something equally southern and disturbing.

Join us for the first blog of the new season for Matthew Richter/xom Dinner Theater. Leave a comment and give us your thoughts on the show or rate the existing reviews to register your opinion.

I'm not going to say that Matt Richter is a genius but, well, there you go, I said it. Dinner theater. Boy does it bring to mind bad performances of 'Godspell' and anemic meals of fettuccine alfredo and iceberg lettuce. There is nothing in this evening that even faintly resembles dinner theater as we know it. Nothing. Welcome to the new world. You enter the darkened theater. You are asked to stand in front of the first row of seats. More people file in. They stand in front of you. There is a black curtain blocking the stage. You don't know if you should sit or not. Some people do.

From the opening invitation sung by Sarah Rudinoff to the closing Secret Cream Puffs, this show is full of surprises. Diners play the Board of Directors of a fictional futuristic "Foundation" that commissioned Richter's elders to investigate the simple question "how do we save food?" Seventy-three years later, it is Richter's role as Director of the Commission, and his assistant played by Jodi-Paul Wooster, to deliver the answer in 16 servings of invention, creation, history and culinary tomfoolery.

Dinner Theater is another provocative and risky idea by Matthew Richter that promises to get people talking and thinking, and that’s why I love it. The intimacy of the evening and well-crafted presentation makes me feel like I just went through a rite of passage and now I am part of a secret club. I don’t want to comment too specifically on the food and accompanying narrative because that would spoil the fun. But I will say,  “yum! ”,  “pretty! ” and  “poprocks rule! ”.