CHICAGO — Dinner theater, that derided and mostly moribund genre, is making an unlikely comeback at the Lookingglass Theater here, where one of this city’s most renowned chefs, Rick Bayless, is preparing a savory meal onstage, and doing a modest bit of acting in a modest little comedy too.  Called “Cascabel,” the show is a sliver of romantic hokum that is mostly used as a platform for a series of Cirque du Soleil-style diversions. While these are being performed the audience is served a three-course dinner conceived by Mr. Bayless, whose Chicago restaurants, Topolobampo and Frontera Grill, serve some of the best Mexican food in the country.  Novel though “Cascabel” is, today it is not really surprising to see a chef plying his trade onstage. As the culture of cooking well has exploded on television, chefs have become all-purpose celebrities who sometimes seem to do as much entertaining — as in performing — as they do cooking. The proliferation of food shows and competitions like “Top Chef” and “Hell’s Kitchen” has probably made a stint at a culinary school a more reliable path to celebrity than acting school. And the excitement with which the audience aims its camera phones at Mr. Bayless after the show, when the cast mingles amiably with the patrons, makes clear that he is very much a local luminary. (He also gets Broadway-style above-the-title billing appropriate to a star.) “Cascabel” was created by Mr. Bayless, Tony Hernandez (who also appears in the show) and Heidi Stillman. Mr. Hernandez and Ms. Stillman are the directors, and the cast is made up of actors, acrobats and a flamenco specialist, along with Mr. Bayless, who is safely and sensibly cast as a chef.  The setting, also sensibly, is a boardinghouse in Mr. Bayless’s home turf of Mexico. The costumes by Mara Blumenfeld and Lijana Wallenda Hernandez vaguely suggest the 1940s. Mr. Bayless is the new cook at Cascabel, which is owned by the mysteriously mournful Señora (Chiara Mangiameli), who mostly keeps to her room, nursing a heart broken long ago and a serious aversion to mole, the classic Mexican sauce. The heartbreak and the allergy, we come to learn, are intimately connected.  As the audience takes its seats, mostly at long communal tables fanning out from the stage, Mr. Bayless is preparing the evening’s first course in the working kitchen onstage. Culinary obsessives will want to know that the show doesn’t afford any great views of Mr. Bayless’s technique. (Patrons at tables on the balcony probably have a better shot at studying his knife skills.) He remains mostly in the background, slicing and simmering and delivering the occasional line of dialogue, while the foreground is given over to a series of divertissements inspired by the raptures induced by his food.  We are instructed by the evening’s Maitre d’ (Jesse Perez, who does most of the evening’s acting) to dig into our ceviche at the same time as the cast of characters assembled at the wooden dining table onstage. “This is a dish to fall in love to, or in love with,” he exhorts us.  Tasty as that ceviche is, few in the audience would be able to match the transports of delight expressed by the daughter of the house (the lovely Lindsey Noel Whiting), who is soon turning pirouettes while suspended from a chandelier. She is joined by the Houseboy (Mr. Hernandez), for an airborne, acrobatic pas de deux, the first of several circus-style acts that are interspersed with a modicum of dialogue.  Some of it rather hoary: when the Gardener (Jonathan Taylor) and his Russian wife (Anne Goldmann) bicycle into the scene and start a sexually tinged food fight, she accosts a patron and asks him to feel her tomatoes.  Mr. Perez nudges along the plot by revealing the romantic history of the Señora: a brief, heady love affair with a chef who has spoiled her for anyone else’s mole. Will she accept the gallant Suitor (Thomas J. Cox), who is determined to break through her icy reserve and win her heart? Will she deign to taste the mole prepared by Mr. Bayless?  She would be foolish not to. While “Cascabel” is distinctly light on the palate as a work of theater — call it Cirque du Soleil sprinkled with salsa — Mr. Bayless’s food is predictably delicious. As an actor, on the other hand, he does not exactly radiate natural stage charisma, although he acquits himself well enough in the delivery of his lines.  But he comes into his own at the evening’s climax, when Ms. Mangiameli descends from her bedroom to perform a flamenco number, and then sweeps Mr. Bayless into a brief tango. While he cannot expect to be recruited to headline a Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman,” Mr. Bayless’s reasonably nimble footwork at least suggests he’d be a tough competitor on “Dancing With the Stars.”  Created by Rick Bayless, Tony Hernandez and Heidi Stillman; directed by Mr. Hernandez and Ms. Stillman; sets and lighting by Brian Bembridge; costumes by Mara Blumenfeld and Lijana Wallenda Hernandez; music and sound by Rick Sims and Andre Pluess; props by Maria DeFabo; choreography by Emilee Peterson; rigging by Lee Brasuell; stage manager, Rose Marie Packer; production manager, Joel Hobson; technical director, Sean Walters. Presented by the Lookingglass Theater Company, Andrew White, artistic director; Rachel E. Kraft, executive director; Philip R. Smith, producing artistic director; Ms. Stillman, New-work artistic director; the Frontera Grill and Silverguy Entertainment. At the Water Tower Water Works, 821 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago; (312) 337-0665; lookingglasstheatre.org. Through April 29. Running time: three hours.  WITH: Carlo Basile (Musician), Rick Bayless (Cook), Nicholas Besnard and Shenea Booth (Solitary Traveler), Thomas J. Cox (Suitor), Anne Goldmann (Gardener’s Wife), Tony Hernandez (Houseboy), Chiara Mangiameli (Señora), Jesse Perez (Maitre d’), Alexandra Pivaral (Bathing Chica), Jonathan Taylor (Gardener) and Lindsey Noel Whiting (Daughter).
The celebrity chef Rick Bayless has a role in “Cascabel,” a Lookingglass Theater production in Chicago that concerns food and romance.