Chef's Theater Ingredients Include Stars of Cuisine and Cabaret, Beginning March 30 at Supper Club | Playbill

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News Chef's Theater Ingredients Include Stars of Cuisine and Cabaret, Beginning March 30 at Supper Club Chef's Theater: A Musical Feast, a unique live experience that is part cooking show, part tasting event and part legit cabaret, begins performances March 30 at the Supper Club in Broadway's theatre district.

Producers West Egg Entertainment, Marty Bell, Greg Smith and Stephen Fass and executive producer Joe Allegro are behind the show, which brings famous-in-the food-world chefs to prepare a meal (with commentary), after which the audience eats, drinks and listens to new songs sung by a special guest. A regular cast of show folk also gets into the cooking act by assisting chefs and performing throughout the show.

The expectation is one chef per week, Tuesday-Sunday, beginning March 30-April 4 with Todd English of Olives. The Supper Club, on West 47th Street, was once the Edison Theatre. Chef's Theater opens April 14.

"It's like a fusion dish," director Stafford Arima told Playbill On-Line. "You know when you go to a restaurant and you have a chicken dish with a strawberry-ginger coulis, and you wonder how this could all go together? You get remnants of each flavor, but it comes together. We're like that: Chef's Theater is a fusion of all these ingredients from diverse sources — theatre, cabaret, cooking. It touches all of your senses: your eyes, your ears, your nose, your tastebuds..."

Interspersed throughout the experience are performances by Shannon Lewis (Fosse, Contact), Paige Price (Saturday Night Fever) and Jim Walton (Merrily We Roll Along), plus a special guest after the intermission (when the audience eats). Kate Shindle (Cabaret) is the featured Act II performer in the first week of the run.

Among theatre performers who have committed to singing during a special dessert shows (11 PM Fridays and Saturdays starting April 16) are Jason Robert Brown (Parade), Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party), Adam Pascal (Rent, Aida), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Anna in the Tropics, Rent), Lauren Kennedy (Les Misérables) and Billy Porter. Arima was the Olivier Award-nominated director of a revisionist London staging of Ragtime, and is staging Guys and Dolls for Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey this spring.

Choreography is by Casey Nicholaw (Radio City Music Hall's Sinatra), with set design by Beowulf Borrit (The Last 5 Years, Class Mothers of '68) and lighting design by Ben Stanton (Play Yourself at New York Theatre Workshop, Adam Rapp's Stone Cold Dead Serious). Sound design is by Peter Hylenski.

The meal prepared onstage will be duplicated backstage by the hundreds by a staff in the Supper Club's kitchen. Vino, dancing and dessert are all part of the experience. As on cable's Food Network, where Chef's Theater is being heavily promoted, an overhead view of the chef's work will be projected on a large TV screen for the crowd.

Marty Bell of West Egg Entertainment was one of the producers of Sweet Smell of Success, A Class Act and is working on the musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

The performance and three-course meal are presented Tuesday through Sunday, with the opening at 6:30 PM and the show beginning at 7:30 PM. Family brunch with chef David Rosengarten will be served Saturdays at noon and Sundays at 1 PM. Dessert Show performances with musical guests will take place Fridays and Saturdays at 11 PM beginning April 16.

Tickets for Chef's Theater dinner performances are $115-$125.  Brunch performances are $65. Special "Chefs Table" seating is available.

All tickets can be purchased through Telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6200 or by visiting the Supper Club box office at 240 W. 47th Street.

Ticket price includes a complete dinner or brunch, performance, and complementing featured beverage. Alcoholic beverages can be purchased from the fully stocked bar in the Supper Club.

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Scheduled chefs include:

  • Todd English (Olives), March 30 April 4
  • Tom Valenti (Cesca, Ouest), April 6-11
  • Food Network's Tyler Florence (Food 911, Tyler's Ultimate Fantasy), April 13-18
  • Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger - Too Hot Tamales (Border Grill), April 20-25
  • Michael Lomonaco (Windows on the World, Noche), April 27-May 2
  • Michael Romano (Union Square Café), May 4-9
  • Rick Moonen (rm), May 11-16
  • David Burke (davidburke and donatella), May 18 23
  • David Rosengarten (The Rosengarten Report), May 25-30
  • Marcus Samuelsson (Aquavit, Riingo), June 1 - 6
    Legendary French Chef Week:
  • Jacques Pepin, June 8 and 9
  • Alain Sailhac, June 10 and 11
  • Andre Soltner , June 12 and 13
  • Ed Brown (Sea Grill), June 15-20
  • Douglas Rodriguez (OLA NY and Miami), June 22 27 "World-renowned sommeliers including Joshua Wesson, Michael Green, Steve Olson and Andrea Immer among others will present a wine-tasting with wines selected to best complement the meal," according to production notes.

    Running the restaurant portion of the event is Restaurant Associates, the well-known restaurant and foodservice management company that's operated for more than 50 years.

    As they leave the Supper Club, each member of the audience will be given a gift bag filled with recipes and other culinary items.

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