The Soup Comes Last is writer/performer Rachel Lampert’s hilarious and heart warming memoir of her 1997 trip to China to stage a production of West Side Story with an all Chinese speaking cast. Her one-woman play is filled with tales of cross-cultural miss-steps, lost translations, life changing events all driven by the dictum “the show must go on!” Love, humor, backstage dramas and the universal desire to reach ones dream are the ingredients of Lampert’s Soup.

What the critics have said about THE SOUP COMES LAST:

“The trip was a comedy of errors and unmet expectations, and Ms. Lampert shows a deft sense of timing and a keen ability to make you see a scene through mere description. And in a lovely, surprising ending, she gives you a chance to test how good your mind's eye is against the real thing. That's when you fully realize just how good her performance and writing were.” - Neil Gentzlinger, New York Times, 2004

The Soup Comes Last, Lampert's hilarious and poignant tale of trying to put on a production of West Side Story in China....More than a monologue about how I spent my time in China, The Soup Comes Last has movement, color, conflict, rising action and climax. Lampert is neither the heroine nor the self-pitying victim of the story but is most often a jaundiced observer of the impossibility, and the beauty, of it all. A comedienne with admirable credits (A Perfect Ganesh, The Cripple of Inishmaan), Lampert demonstrates magisterial timing with her own material. Deepening her version in this rewrite of Soup, she also portrays what other characters were feeling. - James MacKillop, Syracuse New Times, 2004

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