REVIEW: Notch Theatre Company Presents “Cafe Utopia”
“An energy-boosting, commentary-rich blend of theatre and reality, a perfect brew to create change on a national scale”
It’s been a busy season for Broadway DNA, licensing new work around the world, producing new work in the US, publishing new theatre research, and speaking at conferences around the world (next week: The National Theatre Brno). In addition to our bi-weekly newsletter of global theatrical IP, BDNA is also a proud member of the American and International Theatre Critics Associations, writing reviews supporting globally-minded new shows. Thank you for supporting Broadway DNA’s vision to demystify cultural exchange through international producing, licensing, and criticism to empower theatrical discussion around the world.
”Cafe Utopia” featuring Julia Atwood, Al Piper, and Louis Reyes McWilliams. Photo credit: John Keon
At first glance, Notch Theatre Company’s “Cafe Utopia” looks like a tongue-in-cheek Dan Schneider sitcom with a socially-aware twist. A bright blue and pink color-popped unit set is enticing, yet imposing as the audience looks up at the centered, towering juice machine pre-show. How cute, one thinks, reading the cafe menu in swirling chalk calligraphy; I’ll take one “Pumpkin Spice Up Your Life Elixir” and “Gluten-Free Yourself From the Grains of Intolerance Panini.” Then in walks the ensemble cast as the 90-minute corporate-hell comedy begins:
Manager Dee (Kathleen Mary Carthy) lovingly runs a tight team of quirky but earnest workers preparing for a visit from the renowned health-chain’s reclusive CEO. There’s the new girl Bex (Julia Atwood), a part-time student running into work late and earnestly learning the company’s manifesto, I mean handbook, verbatim, hoping to pick up more hours. Musician-with-this-day-job Carlos (Louis Reyes McWilliams) keeps things light and laidback, while indifferent Enzo (Sergio Mauritz Ang) mostly just stays in the back. Veteran employee Ari (Al Piper) ducks and skirts questions about their personal life and keeps them all at arm’s length; all that matters is they’re good at their job and their job is good to them… or is it?
Playwright Gwen Kingston (Broadway DNA catalog’s “Anna Karenina: a riff”, New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and Oprah Daily's 'Most Anticipated Books of 2024' for Did I Ever Tell You?: A Memoir)’s social satire moves deftly from the expected to unexpected, subverting our complacency into absurdity as chaos for these everyman workers at the cafe ensues. When the juice machine breaks down, hours are capped and understaffed, and injury occurs on site, the staff starts to question just how far they’ll let the tug-of-war between job and dignity drag them, and if listening to the call for unionization by a mysterious visitor is worth the risk.
Under director Ashley Olive Teague, the world premiere is engaging, grounded, and vibrantly painted in hues of reality and absurdity. The stellar ensemble cast perfectly embodies what it’s like to have a (trauma) bond in that unique way only coworkers know; the smirks, the eyerolls, the side-eyes, the posturing and rapport, all color in humanity to a thankless job most customers in an ever-increasing, goods-on-demand culture take for granted. Regardless of which side of the counter we usually stand, “Cafe Utopia” takes it a step further, drawing on agitprop practices to fold in fourth-wall-breaking asides spotlighting the community-responsive, real life interviews Notch Theatre Company conducted with workers on the frontlines of the workplace unionization movement around the country. Characters step out to read about corporate virtue signaling, unsafe working conditions, undocumented worker abuse, and more, with these breaks allowing real world, immediate and often horrifying context and supplemental food for thought throughout the otherwise deceptively punchy comedy. One such “break” asks the audience to turn to a nearby neighbor and discuss our personal experiences with unions as we’re served a juice shot; while there’s never a guarantee for audience engagement experiences, Teague and the team masterfully create space for a surprisingly moving, engaging personalization disguised in an easygoing, accessible sheen.
The approachable, all-too-familiar, yet distinct worldbuilding of the titular trendy cafe arises from the genius of scenic & costume designer Calypso Michelet and lighting designer Megan Lang. As the central juicemaker breaks down, mirroring the breakdown of the staff’s wits, its extraordinary functioning mechanics lend the machine to become a character all its own. Glowing and smoking, from foreboding to ferocity, Michelet’s set masters machinal metaphor. In a nod to whatever not-at-all-far future this may be, there’s even a mail tube that whooshes reports directly to corporate HQ, alongside possibility the cafe’s elusive CEO discovered the juice ingredient on a billionaire escapade to space. Although the latter is laughed off, the technology of the play and the literal mood-changing menu tip the play gradually beyond realism, with this sci-fi tinge embraced by Lang’s progressively cooler lighting design in moments of chilling confrontation between characters and ultimately, our own union preconceptions.
Kingston took inspiration from plays like American Hero by Bess Wohl, Paris by Eboni Booth, and Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets, which all dramatize the unique helplessness felt by victims of corporate exploitation. A tall order too; after Waiting for Lefty premiered on Broadway, hundreds of theatre groups requested the rights to perform the piece, as its simple staging allowed it to become an affordable and popular production for union halls and small theatres across the United States (the original cost $8 to produce in 1935, $67 more than it costs to license today before production costs). And while Notch’s world premiere of Cafe Utopia benefits from a cocktail of grants necessary to put up New York theatre 89 years later (including the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation possibly for the showstopping scenic sci-fi boost), the breakdown DNA of Kingston’s piece is an ingenious and vital scalability centered on a tight cast and unit set where the razor-sharp vignettes are the star of the show. Licensing birdseye, the piece doesn’t inherently demand a production level one way or the other of Broadway wow-factor nor Our Town blank imaginations, but can rather ingeniously compress or expand either direction to meet producers’ and communities’ needs and commentary.
The recipe for Cafe Utopia is one part addition to the agitprop canon and one part uncompromising commitment to fresh-idea boldness mixed together to create an energy-boosting, commentary-rich blend of theatre and reality, a perfect brew to create change on a national scale.
Production credits
Notch Theatre Company presents
“Cafe Utopia”
By Gwen Kingston
Directed by Ashley Olive Teague
Cast includes Al Piper, Julia Atwood, Louis Reyes McWilliams, Kathleen Mary Carthy, Sergio Mauritz Ang, and Nayib Felix.
Production credits include Katie Cherven (stage manager), BT Hayes (associate director), Ariella Hecker (assistant stage manager), Megan Lang (lighting designer), Calypso Michelet (scenic, costume, & props designer), Kate Short (sound designer), Charles Jackson, Jr. (producer), and Savannah Ritz (associate producer).
“Cafe Utopia” runs November 2-24, 2024, at Hudson Guild Theatre (441 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001). Run time is 90 minutes with no intermission. For more information visit notchtheatre.org.