The freshly painted mural built on the wall outside Anthony’s Italian Kitchen in the basement of the Middle Street mini-plaza that also shelters Videoport and Bull Moose Music is pretty convincing. So much so that the artist, Felicia Ham, recently found a patron outside the eatery trying to peel down her painted reproduction of an advertisement poster for the Broadway musical Wicked.
It’s this kind of attention (well, not exactly this kind) that Anthony’s Italian Kitchen owner Anthony Brasso hopes will attract more diners to his underground dinner theater.
Eighteen months ago, Brasso began staging a live Broadway revue in the restaurant. It went like this: wine, soup, salad, rolls, pizza, eggplant parmesan, pasta, cannoli, a singing waitstaff, and two hours of songs from well-known Broadway musicals.
With 34 songs every Friday and Saturday night, from 28 acclaimed musicals, Brasso’s cast hits high notes on every show from Annie to Gypsy and Ragtime. Now that’s a sampler menu.
Artist Ham and her husband George first discovered Anthony’s as customers. Enamored with the show and its singing servers, Brasso said they became “groupies.” It was Ham who suggested, to Brasso’s delight, she build a mural on the outside wall.
The mural is a testament to the show, said Brasso. Descending the stairs to the sub-terra plaza, patrons are greeted by a wall transformed into a Broadway scene, right out of New York. It commands a passerby’s every attention with brightly colored replications of posters promoting The Lion King, Les Miserables and Annie. Brasso hopes the mural will pique customers’ interest and add credibility to his own Broadway production.
Brasso is grateful for Ham’s patronage as well as her contribution to what he hopes will be an expanding business. “It’s a tribute to have her as a fan,” he said.
Brasso works with local theater kids to put on his show. About 20 percent of his cast is made up of local kids singing for tips, looking for the chance to dip their feet into the theater pool at Anthony’s.
Since November 2004, Brasso said, he and his crew have sung for and served about 6000 diners at his Broadway Revue.
Brasso is closing in on a critical time for his experimental show: If it reaches the two-year mark, “then it’s made it,” he said. With six months to go, Brasso is on a countdown.
And if it doesn’t make it — what then? “Then we’ll paint the mural spaghetti or something,” he said, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly as if to say, “don’t worry about it, we’ll make it.”
