David Fairs and Conor O’Kane on reviving Moira Buffini’s darkly comic masterpiece for 2026.
Q Dinner hasn’t been revived in London since its original National Theatre and West End run more than twenty years ago. Why now?
The opportunity to re-explore what we potentially see as a 2002 ‘period piece’ through a 2026 lens was a very tempting proposition and Moira has written an incredibly prescient script. For us, this play knew about aspects of society back in 2002 that we have only come to comprehend more recently. We remember hope and promise defining the late nineties and the early Millennium: things like New Labour and the widespread proliferation of the internet for everybody, forging bold notions of all kinds of equality…
You could argue that quite a few of those promises have turned out to be quite hollow. Some of them have become open to dangerous misuse, and as we can clearly see, violent backlash. In ‘Dinner’, it’s almost like you can see seeds of things that we feel quite presently in social media, particularly the notion of the pop-up self-help guru, offering one meaningless new platitude after another within a toxic cycle of economy and ego validation.
Q There’s a fascinating cultural dimension to your production. Can you tell us more?
Without giving too much away, our Paige Janssen, the hostess, is of Japanese heritage. The prospect of intersecting and mirroring Japanese ceremony and culture with English etiquette and social forms was really fascinating to us and to Matsume Kai, the actress playing her.
Q Seven characters are on stage together for the entire evening. How has that shaped your directorial approach?
Rehearsals have been a very, very exciting and interesting challenge. We are influenced in our work by artists like Coralie Fargeat, David Lynch, and Derek Jarman. We work very cinematically in the way that we approach theatre. We tend to storyboard a lot of the work in advance before coming into the room: grappling the movement and the flow of the piece, the overall structure. Then when we get in the room with actors, we put all of that together into a symphony of people, pictures and sounds.
Q Finally, what are audiences in for?
You might think that because this is a play set at a dinner party, that it’s going to be quite formal or quite static – it’s anything but that. So, brace yourselves for an evening of hilarity and wit; the operatic and the intimate; viciousness and love; mystery and excitement; absurdity and food…
And lots and lots of drinks.
Dinner by Moira Buffini is directed by David Fairs and Conor O’Kane. Previews 6 and 7 May, press night 8 May. Running through 24 May 2026 at Omnibus Theatre, Clapham.
