What do you do when you have a show that's taken three top awards: best actor, best director and best production? You bring it back with its original cast and crew, that's what.

And that's what Atlanta, GA's Horizon Theatre Company has done with Nicky Silver's dark farce, The Food Chain, which took top awards from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Creative Loafing and Southern Voice magazines in 1996. Food Chain returns Dec. 16 for a run through Jan. 18.

Director Lawrence Keller returns, as does lead actor Glenn Rainey. Also in the cast again are Susie Grimley and Barry Stewart Mann, joined this time by Brik Berkes and Patricia French.

Silver's other plays include Pterodactyl, Raised In Captivity and Fat Men In Skirts, but it was 1995's The Food Chain at Off-Broadway's Westside Theatre, that launched the savage humorist into the commercial theatre world. The Food Chain follows the tangled relationships of five obsessive characters, all co-dependent, all with ravenous appetites for love and acceptance.

Silver has been quoted as saying, "It was pointed out to me [that] over and over again I write about people who are outsiders. It's like there are two happy happy people in every high school -- the head cheerleader and the football quarterback, and the rest of us just sit on the sidelines picking our noses and eating." Horizon director Keller says, "[Silver's] plays represent a heightened sense of reality, a reality in which people do and say things we would only consider doing and saying in our wildest dreams."

Designing The Food Chain are Rob Medley (sets), Joanna Schmink (costumes), Paul Ackerman (lighting) and Dung Nguyen (sound).

For tickets ($20-$25) and information on The Food Chain call (404) 584-7450.

-- By David Lefkowitz