The Soup Comes Last

Kitchen Theater Company of Ithaca, NY in association with Michael Carson, presents the New York premiere of Rachel Lampert’s one-woman show The Soup Comes Last.

They were invited to China to mount a musical about two people caught in the middle of a culture clash and ended up in the middle of one themselves. It’s 1997 and intrepid choreographer Rachel Lampert, along with South African director Joanne Gordon, are off to the People’s Republic of China’s Jing-yi Academy of Performing Arts to stage the first musical theatre production in China of the quintessential American icon West Side Story… in Chinese. If the world seems upside-down, it is! And The Soup Comes Last tells it all. In this humorous and heart-warming solo performance, Rachel Lampert plays 11 characters including her Chinese interpreters, the Academy’s well-intentioned artistic directors, her hard-working all-Chinese cast and many more, as she recounts her real-life adventures of friendship, culture clash, backstage drama and hope against all odds. Karen Azenberg directs.