THEATRE REVIEW: The Coffee Shop Musical - Foundation NQ, Manchester.

As part of this year's Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, Leo And Hyde presented a brand new concept musical in Foundation, a working coffee shop in Manchester's Northern Quarter, and the title of this musical...'The Coffee Shop Musical'!

The coffee shop is unchanged from the normal daytime layout, and the staff are still serving drinks and cakes as we enter and take our seats. The action takes place in, around, and amongst us. The two cast members - Andrew Patrick Walker and Liv Alexander - enter the cafe up the outside stairs and through the glass doors just as we did; they sit, walk, sing, and even dance all around the seats and us, as well as the bar. This is a fully immersive but not interactive or participatory experience. It works superbly.

The story is a little off-beat, but again it is a quirky and inetersting idea. Voice-overs are heard.. we are told that they are from a distant planet, far far in the distant future... they are not even humans but, a much more highly developed and clinical metamorphosis of us. They tell us that they are broadcasting the last surving video footage of human interaction in a coffee shop, which dates from the year 2022. Homo Sapiens are a primitive and extinct species, and only fragments of our existence and lives remain. This is all done in a tongue-in-cheek manner as this company is obviously quite a new and young one comprising creatives who are themselves the kind of people they are lovingly and self-effacingly lampooning in this musical. - the 'freelancers', the 'influencers', the 'barristas', the 'cat video lovers', the 'unemployed' etc.. are all shown through the sceptical and cynical eyes of their contemporaries and peers. 

And whilst the VO expostulates on the reasons why Homo Sapiens became extinct, the two performers sing and act their hearts out. Their performances are throrough and precise, changing characters as needed, and they have excellent chemistry between them. There are moments of pathos, but mostly this is a comedy, and the humour is well-placed and relevant. 

The music is contemporary (there's even a rap number), but the sound levels are never too loud, and the whole hour is a non-stop onslaught on mankind's adoration of coffee, the reasons for us visiting coffee shops, and what we get up to whilst we are in them! Excellently realised, the two performers deserve the highest praise.. such close-proximity acting is not easy, and these two carried it off with aplomb. Personally I feel the show would have worked better with at least 4 performers, but that is just a personal preference. 

A high energy musical which will wholly entertain you from start to finish, and bring you hopefully, to the same conclusion the super species on the VO had, that 'this is our world', and despite all out faults and imperfections, we should all learn to love and appreciate each other more.... we do deserve to live!

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 16.7.22