Feast and Fable – Caravanserai – May 24-31 2026

Feast and Fable

The children and their adults gather on wooden benches under the shade of an old elm, under the archway at the magical Fringe venue, a ‘world within a world’. And storyteller John Norman Mason is about to transport us into a series of other fabled worlds, all connected by – well, bread,
The show, produced by Tale and Hitch Productions, and offshoot of an eponymous outdoors festival and venue space in Surrey. They have joined forces with Brighton local Stella Gurney, who set up the wonderful Woodfire Campsites, where guests can enjoy gourmet meals from a daily menu of fresh local foods, all cooked outdoors on site.
The concept of the show is delightful – the stories bring to life both the history and geographic importance of bread as nourishment through the ages, all while we make and experience breadmaking ourselves – rolling our own blob of dough, adding yeast, watching our baker mix yeast with oil and water, and, finally cooking and eating our flatbreads fresh from the fire.
The stories themselves were perhaps a few too many to hold the attention of young children, and as animated as Mason was, I kept thinking how much the show would have come alive with the addition of puppets. I think that would have been spellbinding. The children did seem to want more of the hands-on activity and perhaps they could be involved in handling wheat ears and grains, measuring flour, or creating the dough.
Overall though, this was an unusual and engaging children’s show, and young and old alike were delighted with the result – being able to eat delicious bread they’d made themselves. Please sir, could we have some more??