An award-winning musical returns to Manchester this week – set and performed in a coffee shop.
The Coffee Shop Musical returns to Foundation Coffee House following its win for Best Musical at Manchester Fringe 2022.
The show is set in the future, as two AI robots try to decode the human race and decide whether the species was hateful and meaningless, or charming and lovable.
Starring two Mancunian actors, Andrew Patrick Walker (Bat Out Of Hell, World Tour) and Ntombizodwa Ndlovu (The Mountaintop, Royal Exchange).
It is produced by Leo and Hyde, a musical theatre company based in Manchester, which was formed five years ago by creatives Leo Mercer and Stephen Hyde.
The coffee shop musical is the latest production from the duo, and Leo offered some insight into the show’s origins, the unique challenges faced hosting a show in an unconventional space, and – of course – his Manchester coffee shop recommendations.
Leo said: “I spent most of the last five or six years just coffee shop hopping – there was a period back in 2017/18 when we were starting out when literally I would just go from one coffee shop to the next.
“I’ve got all those memories of walking round coffee shops and people watching. That’s the other good thing about a coffee shop: having a minute of just looking at all those people you’re never going to meet but you would like to meet.
“You’re just living these parallel lives with each other.
“Whenever I’m in a coffee shop like Foundation, everybody’s on laptops and it’s just such a weird thing because everybody is there but also not there.”
The unique setting is supported by some unconventional choices and a remarkable plot.
Leo said: “Musical theatre can often feel quite old school, the music is often quite traditional, the stories are often quite old school – and we wanted to have a really futuristic kind of musical theatre.
“All around us is technology, so we came up with this idea for a type of theatre that isn’t scared of using new types of technology, and that isn’t scared of new types of music.
“Normally you go to a theatre and everyone stares at the thing far away, and it’s in the dark, you don’t get a sense of the people but because there’s no stage – the coffee shop is the stage – and you’re looking round, you see everybody else.
“By the end I did feel everyone was talking to each other and there were conversations happening and it was nice to feel like this is a different kind of theatre which fits with what we want.”
Not only does the Coffee shop lead to a more social experience at the theatre, but Leo was keen to highlight that it’s also a more practical way of putting on more shows when faced with finite theatre space.
Leo explained: “It happens after hours, which is another thing. Coffee shops close in the evening and theatres open in the evening and there’s never enough theatres, so why don’t we just use these spaces. So we do it after hours but the first thing people do when they come in is order a coffee, so the coffee shop is open during the play, just not to the general public.”
While the unorthodox setting for the show has the benefits of caffeinated beverages, bringing it to life wasn’t without its technical challenges.
The first of which was ensuring audience sightlines.
Leo illustrated: “You have to make sure everywhere is visible. So many coffee shops are cute because they’re small and there’s lots of different corners, you can go here, there and everywhere, so for the Coffee Shop musical the first thing is you need to have a space that’s regular, so you can see everywhere from everywhere.
“In a normal theatre you’ve got the number of seats that there are, but in this case it’s the battle between wanting more floor space for acting versus for tables for more people to sit at. So there’s a question of how are you going to lay out the spaces.”
And compromises had to be met on other technical fronts such as with microphones –
Leo said: “When we did our first workshop performance ever I was like ‘no, no way, it’s intimate it’s small, you don’t want to feel like you need microphones.
Then our sound designer was like ‘can I give it a shot and just see what happens if we do’ – and it was amazing.”
And as a seasoned coffee aficionado, Leo offered his top three places for an espresso in Manchester.
Foundation Coffee – Great for some deep focus work
Ancoats Coffee Co – for a cavernous and cosy vibe
And Takk – one Leo spent a lot of time working in pre-Covid
The show runs from 1st-5th of February with a limited number of half-price tickets available for Mancunian Matters readers with the code ‘studentslovecoffee’.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-coffee-shop-musical-tickets-500025558907
