Comfort Food by Rachel Lampert & Larry Pressgrove
playing at the Kitchen Theatre through December 15
Around a simple homespun phrase—Comfort Food—Rachel Lampert (book & lyrics) and Larry Pressgrove (music) conjured up a beautiful musical triptych which first hit the Kitchen Theatre boards in 2007. Reprised virtually by Walking on Water Productions (WoW) during the shutdown, it returns home in a vibrant, loving staging by co-produced by WoW and Fitz&Startz Productions.
The ingredients of the musical are both simple and clever: three monologues with songs all performed within a working kitchen.
1. Harriet’s Kitchen
Harriet (Emily Jackson), hosts a tv show (Sing for Your Supper) offering quick-to-make recipes served up with novelty songs and peeks into her daily life. For weeks, her upcoming wedding has been a big feature. But just prior to today’s taping, he dumped her.
The show must go on, so facing betrayal with a smile, Harriet sails into today’s recipe, lentil soup. Perhaps she slices the veggies with more force than necessary.
She breaks down, she recovers. Jackson rides a delicious roller-coaster of feeling, filling the space with a bright, vibrant soprano and hair-trigger comic timing. ‘Legumes’ is a tricky, toe-tapping list song to a Latin beat. ‘Peeling an Onion’ finds the tears. Rage, betrayal, and resilience make for a quick, demanding arc in song and acting, and Jackson (the Kitchen’s new Artistic Director) shines under Lampert’s direction.
2. Gabriel’s Kitchen
This time it’s Gabriel who has slipped away from his partner (Jamal) who has smothered him with culinary overkill. He waltzes into Mom’s kitchen, two grocery bags in hand. He yearns for simplicity—Cheerios, canned soup, ready to heat mac & cheese, pb & jelly.
Along with comfort food, Lampert and Pressgrove play with genres: a country croon for ‘Campbell’s Soup’; R&B for ‘PB&J’.
The comedy is broad here, an ongoing splurge that welcomes the touch of a clown.
Achille Vann Ricca more than satisfies as he tears into each semi-meal, full on committing to silliness, as he teeters between overgrown child and a man with a slightly bruised heart. Director Cynthia Henderson shapes the piece with care, with music direction by Pressgrove.
In these first two parts, Lampert & Pressgrove lean on flash (superbly), a savvy marriage of wit in both lyrics and musical stylings, and a strong forward drive. Having piqued our palate with the bold and splashy, they crown their chamber piece with a shift into delicacy and inwardness, introducing a humor more weathered and wry. Not unlike if Grace Paley wrote a musical.
3. Estelle’s Kitchen
As a winter storm threatens the arrival of Estelle’s (Lampert) old friend, Deana, to her upper west side apartment, she prepares her ‘Breakfast for One.’
A widow of a few years, she finds herself talking more and more to her deceased love, Joe, though she’s a bit unsure where he may be hanging out. Deana comes from Seattle each yarhzeit.
It’s a tender portrait of loss and getting on, widowhood and strongly remembered love, and a paean to what one might term the friendship of two old broads.
Melancholy and yearning mix with Estelle’s sharp practicality, she’s not one to brood. In the course of just four songs we sense the heartbeat of a full life. The reaching of ‘Waiting for Spring,’ the sensuality of a ‘Man in the Kitchen,’ the release of “Just Go.”
Lampert wears Estelle with ease; sharp quips, a way of pulling herself together after a reflection, the ease of her dialogue with the not quite missing Joe. Susannah Berryman directs with a graceful touch.
Tyler M. Perry has provided a lovely kitchen with a variety of moods in his lighting. Travis Knapp provides music direction for Harriet’s Kitchen and Estelle’s Kitchen.
Newcomers will be gently wooed by Comfort Food. Those who have had the pleasure of watching its three incarnations may find some wonderful ghosts (one who has moved on) hovering around these performances: Emily Jackson, Jahmar Ortiz and Kristin Sad as Estelle via streaming just a few years back, but also the full-throated singing of Jessica Flood as Harriet, the man-child Greg Bostwick fashioned, and most strongly, Norma Fire’s Estelle. Written to Fire’s trenchant, salty brilliance, Estelle carries on, one of Lampert’s finest creations. How lovely to see it come full circle to its author.
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