by Julie Bookman
GRANT PARK — What good is sitting in your TV room? Come to the Cabaret! After eight years of serving breakfast and lunch and steadily building a loyal following, Stone Soup Kitchen on July 12 launches a dinner theater night that it hopes will become a monthly event.
Longtime Atlanta writer, musician and thespian Larry Schulz has rounded up some of his favorite fellow thespians for an evening of theatrical hijinks. Besides Schulz, aka “Clay Spurz,” the cast features Lesly “Scooter” Fredman; busy Atlanta musician Britt Dean; dancer-choreographer-orator Joe Kelly (former artistic director of Atlanta Contemporary Dance Company); and Marian Sundance. The buffet dinner service starts at 7 p.m., with the show underway by 7:30. Your first cocktail is included in the $25 in-advance price. (SSK now has a full bar).
Patrons will enjoy a “micro theater-in-the-round” experience, says Schulz. The varied program at the Grant Park café will feature comedy, music and more. For example, two skits in the show are rooted in well-known literary works. Imagine a condensed, folksy, or “Dylan-esque” version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” or “MacTango,” in which Kelly and Sundance perform a steamy scene from “Macbeth” – as reimagined by writer Schulz.
“These actors are like my muses,” Schulz says of his castmates. “I’m inspired to write for them because I know what they’ll be able to do with the material.” SSK Cabaret Night will also include a scene in which Scooter and Spurz play Prohibition-era gangsters Mugsy and Bugsy; a piece about forbidden love on a small Georgia plantation of long ago (with Sundance); and tunes from two of the three musicians who regulary entertain as The Band of Desperate Men (Schulz and Dean).
All five performers have appeared in similar “theatricals” staged smack on Fredman’s Decatur porch. Fredman’s “Cold Soup Dinner Theatre” porch shows – “where the soup is cold and the art is hotter than the weather!” – have enjoyed an enthusiastic following in Fredman’s Lenox Place neighborhood for some 10 years.
Stone Soup owner Sarah Rick says that this quirky variety show is the “ideal form of entertainment for Stone Soup to dip its toe into live theater. We’ve always wanted to find just the right smaller-scale show because we have such an attractive space,” says Rick, referring to the enclosed patio behind the main eatery.
“Sarah and I go way back,” says Schulz, who worked for Rick at her “first” Stone Soup, a Virginia-Highland health-conscious grocery popular in the 1970s and ‘80s.
“In some ways, it’s like we’ve been cooking this up for years,” he adds. “And now, it’s in the soup!”
And yes, dinner theater guests can expect soup. There will be a cold tomato gazpacho, or choose a hot soup with chicken sausage, white beans and local greens. A salad bar will feature fresh summer fruits and vegetables. Dessert: Stone Soup’s signature peach cobbler with whipped cream.
While the dinner theater is a one-night event, the players have added an “Insiders Special,” or first performance, at 7 p.m. on July 11. Admissionis $5 at the door; there will be a cash bar.
IF YOU GO:
Stone Soup Kitchen Cabaret Dinner Theater
7 p.m. Fri., July 12
584 Woodward Ave., just off Boulevard (Grant Park/Cabbagetown)
$25 in advance, $30 at the door; call 404.228.1763
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