Writer and Director: Bruce Kitchener
Coffee Break, writes creator and director Bruce Kitchener, of his show for the Camden Fringe, ‘is a metaphysical comedy involving body and soul and the unbearable triteness of being,’ a bold if baffling claim. Two characters, Lu and Jo, whom we assume are a couple, are in some neutral place – is it an urban coffee shop? Jo is recounting with some fury an encounter with a cyclist. Cross-examined by Lu, Jo admits to having been walking in a cycle lane listening to headphones, but refuses to admit any sort of liability. There follows a reasonably amusing if rather ranty rant about cyclists. And other rants are to follow. Jo is easily wound up and Lu seems to enjoy doing the winding.
As time passes it becomes clear that the play is pitching itself as absurdist. At first, the pair think they’re in some sort of escape room scenario, but the idea quickly evaporates. Every so often a door opens and an official, played by Kat Kitchener, appears with a clipboard. She is variously a receptionist, a nurse and a police officer. She steadfastly refuses to tell them when they’ll be seen – but by whom and for what purpose is deliberately withheld.
Meanwhile, she gets some comic mileage playing her various obstructive women. She is funny as the emotional policewoman, collapsing into floods of tears as she breaks bad news to Jo and Lu about their ex-cat. But really this scene is just this one joke, endlessly protracted. And altogether the comedy produces diminishing returns as scene after scene ends identically.
Emily Beach as Lu and Ezra Dobson as Jo makes a reasonable fist of playing the bantering pair, but the jokes are rather threadbare. The scene in which Beach and Kitchener play two old-fashioned male doctors is like something dreamed up decades ago for French and Saunders. There’s a joke that’s a variant of the old chestnut ‘My dog has no nose,’ and even a bit of worn-out old Monty Python’s Dead Parrot. Not so much dad jokes as granddad jokes, then.
Runs until 10 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
