There's a good reason it's called Surprise Theatre

Productions at Natasha's Cafe designed to catch diners off guard

By Rich Copley

Eric Seale won't even tell his mother if he is going to be in a Surprise Theatre show.

"We'll sit down with a new actor and say, 'This must be a surprise,'" Seale says. "Don't even tell your wife you're going to be in the show."

The vow of secrecy is just one of the many tricks that go into creating the popular dinner-theater attraction at Natasha's Cafe

Surprise Theatre started in July 2005 at Natasha's, inspired by an observation by the restaurant and boutique's owners, Gene and Natasha Williams, that there were restaurants in New York where waiters and waitresses, who were also actors, would burst into song or other theatrics. After eight editions, things are a bit more planned at Surprise Theatre in Lexington, but the idea is still that patrons will be taken unawares by plays that pop up during dinner.

The first Surprise Theatre was very restaurant-based, and because there wasn't an admission charge or promotion at the door, some patrons were really surprised when the plays broke out.

During the past two years, the event -- which usually features a few short plays on a similar theme -- has grown in popularity, and there is an admission charge to cover royalties for the plays, so the fact of the event is not so surprising. The date, dinner seating time and theme are advertised.

But Seale, artistic director and Tara Adkins, director of marketing, have ratcheted up the ambition of the experience while keeping it as surprising as possible.

One of the pinnacles of their aspiration was Surprise Theatre's March installment, in which actors staged Shel Silverstein's Smile, complete with a video lead-in and a jarring opening with Seale being thrown through the restaurant's front door by a trio of women dressed up Reservoir Dogs-style.

One challenge that routinely faces a Surprise show is where in the restaurant to stage a play -- they have never actually used the small stage at the back of Natasha's -- and how to hide props and actors.

"One of the evolutions of Surprise Theatre is that the audience is constantly looking around to figure out where the plays are going to happen," Adkins says.

They try to have fun with that, planting red herrings like the wayward object that looks like a prop but isn't or the well-known actor who takes a purposeful stride through the restaurant.

Sometimes, the audience makes a mistake.

Seale recalls the night a couple got into an animated argument and realized after a few minutes that everyone had turned their chairs and was looking at them.

Many Lexington actors attend Surprise Theatre as regular patrons. So people who follow the local stage scene might end up scoping out a table with, say, "that guy that was in Tartuffe," expecting to see a play break out next to their table, but it turns out the actor just came to see the show.

Creating theater in such a dynamic environment sometimes results in the surprises working the other way around: The audience catches the actors off-guard, by, say, moving, inadvertently or possibly otherwise, into the path a performer has to traverse or even making off with a prop.

Seale recalls a night when some patrons left with the scroll he had made for a play called Babel.

"I had to chase them all the way to Short Street and say, 'We'd love to let you keep that, but I need it for the next show,'" Seale recalls.

But the directors relish the idea that they have created theater that makes people want to keep souvenirs, as if they caught a foul ball at a baseball game.

Another hallmark of Surprise is that sometimes plays take place right across diners' tables, or a diner unwittingly becomes part of the show.

But this week's Surprise Theatre installment is different. Rated 'R' is an ensemble of scripts that Seale and Adkins found too "surprisingly" edgy in their content to spring on unsuspecting patrons.

They also call it their most ambitious outing.

Seale says, "April will put everything we've done before in a different category."

How?

That's a surprise.

'Rated 'R''
Presented by: Surprise Theatre.
When: April 25-27; seating at 6-6:30 p.m.
Where: Natasha's Cafe, 112 Esplanade.
Tickets: $6; does not include dinner.
Call: (859) 259-2754.

---