I nearly ate a small cricket pierced on a pin inside an orange nasturtium flower, but chickened out at the last moment. Kindle Theatre’s immersive performance piece felt like Gormenghast meets Babette’s Feast, set in operatic Flemish painting. You would like to say the set was sumptuous, and it was in a way, as you were led by a bent and hissy-voiced retainer through a phantasmagoria of contemporary junk, ranging from old oil-fired radiators to soft bell-shaped bin bags strung from the walls. Through the curtains of recycling, a chorus of cooks, in voluminous chef’s costume, gently moan and sing.

Once led through to the feasting area, the cook’s tableaux and song picked up the threads of the post-apocalyptic story from the retainer. They referenced a queen who spoke in a lofty out-of-touch voice from a crackling TV screen suspended above our heads. The weird food (strands of seaweed, the crickets, pork cake) didn’t overshadow the well-crafted physicality and narrative of the piece, but rather felt like a natural development of it.

This show was part of Kindle Theatre’s continuing development of performances based around cooking and food (in other shows they’ve roasted pheasants over hot coals) and Eat Your Heart Out was inventive, fun, and impressively performed. Kindle managed that difficult line in interactive theatre between looking after and challenging your audience, without any lack of pace or style. There is a real sense of freshness in the performing – and the cricket was fresh as well.