Between the time I leave my office and the moment I take my seat at whatever show I’m seeing on a given night, I generally have about 15 minutes for dinner. Or, more accurately, a late feeding. What that means in a practical sense is that I’m well acquainted with the location of the McDonald’s nearest most theaters you could name. Chipotle is a welcome changeup for me. (Grilled vegetables! Guacamole!) If I can stretch the 15 minutes to 20 and I’m headed for, say, Theater Wit on Belmont, I may stop at Art of Pizza. The other day, in a wild move, I shot west of Steppenwolf to try Epic Burger. It like to blew my mind.
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I live, in short, in my own private food desert. So I’m grateful to Lookingglass Theatre Company for Cascabel, where dinner for the audience is built into the script. The show isn’t a long-term solution to the critic’s diet problem—or even the average patron’s, since tickets go for a stunning $200-$225 apiece and they’re already sold out through the final performance on April 29. But Cascabel at least gave me an evening’s respite from what would otherwise have been a quick dumpling at the Wow Bao in Water Tower Place.
The only resident immune to the magical pleasures of the new cook’s cuisine is the Señora, the inn’s proprietress. In her youth the Señora loved and lost a chef named Raul—who, as it happens, made a fabulous mole of his own. Since then she’s been bitter and depressed and, worse, repulsed by food. As performed by Chiara Mangiameli, she skulks about like a wraith in widow’s weeds, doing her best to avoid a middle-aged suitor (Thomas Cox) with an unfortunate mustache.
Eh, but so what? There’s no Cascabel without Bayless, and Cascabel would be a terrible thing to lose. And like I say, I’m grateful for the meal.
Through 4/29: Tue-Sat 7 PM, Sun 5 PM, Lookingglass Theatre Company, Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan, 312-337-0665, lookingglasstheatre.org, $200-$225, includes hors d’oeuvres, dinner, and nonalcoholic beverages.
