Triple Espresso

Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin until 2 November 2002. Fringe Festival.

It's Hugh Butternut Nite at the Triple Espresso coffeehouse. Our host (Michael Pearce Donley) is a camp Tom Green style parodic pianobar entertainer, complete with over-the-top pastiches of well-known stars.

With Mom and Dad in the audience - as well as his unnamed 'bride' - we are invited to share Butternut's 25th anniversary in residence at the slightly seedy venue. He has brought his former performing companions: the muscle-bound malaprop, Bobby Bean (Bob Stromberg), and the lugubrious, laconic straight-man Buzz Maxwell (Bill Arnold).

Their act, it transpires, had rocketed to oblivion, and reminiscences of the débacle and residual hostility provide the monofilament thread of a plot. The performers get more out of this material than you might expect, ranging from sleight of hand to shadow puppetry via mime and slapstick.

The trio are highly disciplined Americans whose split-second timing wrings laughter out of bathos, and enthusiastic applause even from the normally sceptical. All are of a standard that allows them to perform 'badly' at will as they recount the tale of their rags to rags career with varying degrees of reluctance and rancour. The progress of the absent Cassandra from one to the other and finally to wed the coffee shop proprietor is chronicled en passant.

Occasional rants in a fake African language to the offstage owner add a convincing verisimilitude, but the local colour references added for the Dublin show are in the main laboured and neither necessary nor helpful. They do, however, indicate a high degree of attention to detail, with mention of the INTO worked into Bean's difficulty with words and a delightfully pointed and timely reference to Liam Lawlor.

Mostly well-judged peripheral business serves as counterpoint to the main action, including plenty of mutual up-staging - which at times is where the story is really being told. There's even a musical requests slot, on this particular occasion including a fine piece of fake bafflement at the mention of Daniel O'Donnell, following which the pianist duly obliged, to loud applause and laughter.

A night of amiable nonsense to take your mind off your woes, and not an economist in sight: Nice, indeed.

Mícheál Ó hUanacháin