D X Wombat, you've obviously never seen the Cabin crew miming 'chicken, fish or beef'! You would know then just how great our miming skills are. As to training, we do have some different scenarios for new crew to practice and some do require miming and other random acting.
I once had an unscheduled night stop in Abidjan with a 747 full of Nigerians and a couple of gentlemen who spoke only mandarin. We looked after those two for 36 hours without actually managing to exchange a single word and still got them to the hotel, fed them and got them back on the plane to LHR. I am sure they still think it was an all inclusive tour.