Devin Harrington, Kyle Leung, Robin Chase and Steph Crothers from Waiting For Coffee | Photo by STARLIGHT
Presented by The Purple Stage
Last summer, I caught this troupe’s whimsical Fringe entry, Mind The Umbrellas!, which surprised and delighted me. And they’re back this year! Created by STARLIGHT, developed with dramaturg Eliza Martin and a trio of neurodiverse performers with complex disabilities (Devin Harrington, Kyle Leung, Robin Chase) and featuring clown Steph Crothers, Waiting For Coffee is a very trippy experience. If you dig absurdity and abstraction, as I do!, you’re likely to find an abundance of playful nonsense to latch onto here.
Let me set the scene for you. There is a table and two chairs. Two women sit waiting for coffee. Two men are waiting on them. Seems simple enough, even sort of mundane. But things go wildly off the rails here in ways that are hilarious, eerie, and even hauntingly beautiful.
So, what are you in for? I don’t want to spoil anything, so let’s see if I can pique your interest while keeping all the bizarro specifics firmly up the show’s sleeve.
There’s a restless leg which tells us that waiting makes some people very anxious.
Others, though, are fine with it—while waiting, they can yell their order, yell the weather report, make a new friend.
An apple appears on the table—doesn’t do much until the payoff!
People wait, obviously, and in their rambling and cavorting, there’s a resonant meditation on waiting—the inevitability, the frustration, the potential for discovery.
Some plastic sheeting appears and it’s super creepy, but also pays off in a subtly dazzling bit of playful magic.
Instead of the coffee and muffin she ordered, a lady gets her hair done and it’s, uh, well she seems fine with it.
It’s strange, always so very strange, but as they sit, stand, run or play hide and seek, we see connections being formed.
I love the aesthetic here. The hot pink and amber are genuinely vibrant and uplifting. The hats are very cute, even cuter when these gents tip them at each other. The music cues are also highly evocative.
This absurdist form is a truly inspired format here, exceptionally well suited to the needs and capacity of the neurodiverse collaborators. I was often caught off guard, each little episode endearingly offbeat and, if you really give in to it, pretty relatable.
