This Sunday, Pendragon Theatre and the Lake Placid Center for the Arts combined their talents to serve up all that toasty warmth and comfort in the center’s annex building, the former crafts store and, before that, arts library. When I was last in the space (one of my favorite places to go for Christmas gifts), it was packed with all manner of hand crafted products. This time the space was largely empty. In the center, a dance floor, bars and mirrors had been installed, and at the far end a horde of tables had been set up.

    At the tables were a lot of people sucking down soup, eating corn bread and having a jolly good time. It was like stepping into one of those outdoor café’s, except this one was inside. There was a lot of soup to choose from; fresh tomato, chicken with stars, curried butternut bisque, turkey goulash, chili, a seafood bisque and several more; also many different kinds of bread. Several brought along their own beverages, which added to that bistro feeling.

    All the food was donated, as were the talents of eight actors gathered together for Play With Your Soup, a benefit for the LPCA and Pendragon, featuring  a reading of the play Fuddy Meers written by David Linsay-Albaire. The idea for the event was conceived and directed by Matt Sorensen, who also doubled as the ticket taker.

    “What gave you the idea for combining food and a reading as a benefit?” I asked Matt as he sold the last ticket for the show.

    “It was an idea that Pendragon had done in the past with chili. I wanted to revive and update that idea and to present it in this space. Pendragon and the arts center have been working together a lot lately and I wanted to present something that was a bit new and see if there would be an audience for it. The turnout was better than I expected; we sold out.”

    “This is a multi-use space,” said Nadine Duhaime, director of the LPCA. “ORDA runs a tumbling class in here and we have a ballet class. I believe that this is the first time that a performance has been presented in this space. The actors are donating their time, the food has been donated, and you are our test audience. If you have any ideas for other events or how we can improve this one, please pass it on. We already know next time to make even more soup.”

    “This is not your typical play,” said Bob Pettee, the artistic director of Pendragon as he introduced the evening. “I should say it is not our typical play. We chose it because it would have been difficult to stage, but a reading makes it possible.”

    The actors took their chairs, Clare Paulson set the scene, I took a sip of a lovely South African red, and they were off.

    Fuddy Meers tells the story of a woman, about 40, who has amnesia. Every day her husband and son have to tell her anew who she is working from a book they have developed on her life. Events take a turn when a man she discovered hiding under her bed tells her that her husband plans to kill her and he came to save her. That he has a burnt ear, a limp, a lisp, is blind in one eye, has a chain shackled to his arm and claims to be her brother casts some doubts, but since her son and husband will not tell her the circumstances that lead to her loss of memory, she wonders, if he might be at least partially telling the truth. By the time intermission rolled around, Claire had been dragged off by the limping man to meet her mother Gertie, who had a stroke and can’t speak too clearly, and where she meets Millit, a friend of her brother’s who also is also shackled (they had escaped from prison it turns out) and carries with him a foul-mouthed puppet.

    The audience and cast then have 15 minutes to latch on to some amazing brownies with whipped cream with cardamom, strawberries, cookies and other delights. Clearly being a test audience has it rewards.

    In act two, Claire’s brother turns out not to be her brother, but her first husband and she is the one responsible for all his wounds. Richard, her current husband, who worked in the hospital where Claire had been treated, took advantage of her memory loss to propose to her and get her to marry him. In a struggle Heidi’s gun goes off, Claire’s son gets wounded in the arm and Gertie takes advantage of the chaos to stab the limping man, who later blurts out to Claire, “Now I am glad you poured the hot bacon grease in my ear, you burned the bad part out of me.”  One can see why this would have been tricky to stage, much easier to let one’s imagination fill in the setting.

    “So, what did you think,” I said to my tablemates Jackie and Jordan Hornstein from Long Lake.

    “I think they did a great job,” Jackie said. “It’s a very entertaining play and a great setting for a reading. Jordan heard about this about a week ago. I said sure, it sounds like fun and it was.”

    “It is such a great venue,” Jordan said. “The dinner was wonderful. It is a great thing to do this time of year. I hope they will put on more events like this.”

    “Dashen dunder mince tate,” said Fran Yardley as Gertie.

    “What did you say?” I said.

    “That’s an understatement,” said Fran. “See, they translate all her phrases so I would know what she was saying even if the audience didn’t.”

    “We could use some more tables,” Nadine said.

    “Tables?”

    “If we had more tables we could seat more people.” I could see that Nadine, Matt and Bob had already decided that the test was a success. Stay tuned.