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Soup du Jour

Musical in 2 Acts. Book by Todd Mueller and Hank Boland. Music and lyrics by Gregg Opelka.

1999 Casey Award Winner: Best Musical (Northwest Indiana Excellence in Theatre Foundation)

Synopsis

There's a mystery at Bailey's restaurant, one of Gotham's top dining establishments, and it's up to Katharine Hawks, the New York Herald-Tribune's Pulitzer Prize-winning ace reporter, to solve it!

J. P. Thompson, editor of the struggling Herald-Tribune is desperately searching for a way to increase circulation. Across town, Stewart Bailey is simultaneously mourning the death of his father and preparing for his imminent wedding to socialite golddigger Tiffany Vandervanden. Stewart has just inherited his father's restaurant, the success of which was built on its famous soup du jour.

There's only one catch: Stewart's father took the recipe with him to the grave, and Stewart—along with everyone else in the story—winds up searching wildly for the missing recipe. Editor Thompson decides he, too, must have the secret recipe to solve his paper's circulation problems. Enter Katharine Hawks to save the day. Sent undercover as a waitress to Bailey's restaurant to find the recipe for the famed soup, Katharine winds up losing her heart to Stewart Bailey. Once she learns Stewart has lost the recipe, Katharine is in a real dilemma: Career or love?

Winning songs, lightning-fast dialogue in the Tracy-Hepburn tradition, and a great plot are the delicious ingredients of this delightful tribute to 1930s screwball comedies.

Instrumentation:

Percussion; violin; bass; tenor sax; flute; clarinet; piano

Musical Numbers

1. Overture
2. Katharine Hawks, the Foreign Correspondent
3. The Scoop on the Soup
4. Where?
5. Mr. Chaplin, Wait Your Turn
6. The Nothin-to-Complain-About Blues
7. Soup Montage
8. The Wedding Toast
9. Write the Story / In Love with Kate
10. Entr'acte
11. A Lovely Scandal
12. Look Behind the Face
13. Write the Story (reprise)
14. What Women Get Ya
15. So Sorry, Tiffany / Soup Montage (reprise)
16. The Wedding Toast (reprise)
17. Bows

Cast: 3m., 3w. (Expansion possible: adding customers in restaurant/newspaper office.)

Scenes and Settings: New York City, 1939.

Reviews:

• "Soup du Jour is as close to perfection as musical comedy gets! The recipe for successful musical comedy has been followed beautifully: take equal parts talent and chutzpah, mix in a workable plot, lovable characters and memorable songs and sprinkle with that certain magical ingredient that makes audiences thrill to be in the theatre." —Steadstyle Chicago
• "With an expert score by Gregg Opelka and a lighthearted script by Todd Mueller and Hank Boland, this is a treat." —Chicago Reader
• "A madcap and charming homage to the past. Think pheasant under glass. Think cherries jubilee."—Chicago Pioneer Press
• "Soup du Jour is the recipe for old fashion gaity! It's all about laughing, about toe-tapping tunes and witty lyrics."—www.chicagocritic.com
• "Filled with laughter and catchy tunes, Soup du Jour is simply an evening of great, not-to-be-missed musical comedy." —Indiana News Dispatch