Review: The Café (site-specific production in association with the Old Red Lion Theatre)

The Café
Site-specific production in association with the Old Red Lion Theatre
Reviewed on Saturday 23rd March 2013

“A struggling café is forced to make cuts. A waiter tries to organise a strike. Will he convince a Turk, a Pole, and a trialling waitress that striking is the way forward?”

The Café, written by Ben Aitken and directed by Josh Roche, opens well. The show is a site-specific production and performed at The Coffee Works in Islington. The location is lovely, but its modern look made it hard to believe that this was a struggling café down by the sea, far away from London. However, the performance of Marcus Dearing (played by Paul Lincoln) with his mean demeanour and attitude towards the staff, cutting breaks and food allowance, soon created a world of struggle and he certainly managed to bring tension to every scene

The audience reacted with such warmth of familiarity, relating to working for minimum wage either currently or at some point in their lives and under the constraints and the mercy of a boss like Marcus. The cast were strong, and I felt myself drawn to each and every character’s background and story.

Rose (beautifully portrayed by Sophie Dickson) and Joe (passionately played by Jolyon Westhorpe) are both university graduates and shed light on the current reality of our employment rates for young graduates in the past few years. As Marcus tells us:

“I’ve even started wallpapering my bathroom with CVs so that each time I’m sat reading The World….I’m reminded of all the poor gits tumbling out of university without a prospect between them.”

I loved the contrast between Naz from Turkey (played by Christopher Kouros) who shed light throughout the play reminding us that it’s not so bad. And that left us contemplative for a moment in the whirlwind of Joe’s political opinions.

A stand out performance comes from Nathan Robinson who plays Jimmy, a silent but thoughtful character throughout. Even though we were aware from the start that he didn’t speak English, I was certainly convinced that this was a Polish kitchen porter who, without words, managed to create his story for us. A role which quite easily could have been played to a stereotype, Nathan made just as real as the kitchen porter we may have worked with before. And without spoiling too much his journey had a light of prosperity towards the end which came across beautifully and humbly.

I felt that Café didn’t have a big enough journey. There was definitely a huge pivotal moment as the character Joe asked the café employees to go on strike. As this was the press breakdown for the play, I was left a little disappointed and felt that more could have been done with this key moment. I was also left dissatisfied with the play’s journey and conclusion. The Café runs the risk of being an opinion of the writer onto the audience, rather than keeping us involved with the characters.

A very well-acted piece by all the cast and with a true informative political message and with a lovely café to watch it in too, it’s definitely still worth coming along to watch.

Reviewed by Deborah Hargreaves
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