Archive: Arts & Entertainment

From Ithaca to Beijing to New York City and now back to Ithaca comes Rachel Lampert’s THE SOUP COMES LAST in a limited nine-performance run July 3 to July 13.  SOUP is a delightful and hilarious memoir of her 1997 trip to China to stage the first-ever production of WEST SIDE STORY in the Peoples’ Republic. This international backstage story filled with miscommunications and cultural missteps has been a long-time favorite with Ithaca area audiences.

When SOUP played for a month Off-Broadway, the New York Times note, “The trip was a comedy of errors and unmet expectations, and Ms. Lampert shows a deft sense of timing and a keen ability to make you see a scene through mere description. And in a lovely, surprising ending, she gives you a chance to test how good your mind’s eye is against the real thing. That’s when you fully realize jut how good her performance and writing were.”

Of Lampert’s performance in the last production in Ithaca for which she won the SALT Award for Best Actress of the Summer Season 2004, the Syracuse New Times said, “Lampert demonstrates magisterial timing with her own material. Deepening her version in this rewrite of Soup, she also portrays what other characters were feeling.”  
 
“I’m planning some more changes, a few new stories and I am excited to be directed by the amazing Margarett Perry in this production. So much has happened to me and to China in the last eleven years. I am interested in exploring the play within a new context,” says Lampert.
 
Margarett Perry, director of Brian Dykstra’s STRANGERHORSE and CLEAN ALTERNATIVES; A MARRIAGE MINUET by David Wiltse and this season’s stunning Pinter’s OLD TIMES, will bring her keen eye and ability to sharply focus the story telling to this iteration.
 
The set will have the original design by Dan Meeker, costumes by Lisa Boquist, the score created by Mer Boel for the NYC production and lighting design by E.D. Intemann.

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