WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE
THE STAGE REVIEW
10th April 2007
It hits the ground running, this play. Right away seasoned sitcom writer Greg Freeman introduces us to divorcee Dominic, played hanged-doggedly by Charles Armstrong, who is bemoaning the fate of his cat, soon to be neutered by his ex-wife. It sets the pitch for an hilarious, well-observed hour and a half of sitcomedy.
Wake Up and Smell the Coffee is like Friends ten years on, when the characters are bitter and middle aged-spreading themselves around the coffee shop. Narcoleptic pie millionaire Harry (a good performance from Daniel Hill) is lusty but lost, while Georgina (the right combination of neurosis and fragility by Clare Kissane) is lost and lonely.
Into this comes the maelstrom that is Harry’s ex-wife Hanny, a typhoonic performance from Helen Lederer, who dominates proceedings by playing on everyone’s already pained neuroses.
The comedy is quick and well-paced with Ninon Jerome’s direction adding grease to the mix. There is the feel of a quality television sitcom about this piece. Ironic considering that a “feel of a quality” is exactly what’s missing from most television sitcoms.
Even without Lederer this would be a well-paced, highly enjoyable sitcom, but her performance gives it all something extra. She could easily have swamped the production with hammed up, ubercamp over-the-topness, but this seasoned comedy performer shows an exquisite touch.
That the end feels like the end of the middle episode in a well-received television comedy fails to detract from this production that would do very well on the touring circuit. 
[Jeremy Austin]
HIGH AND HAM REVIEW
12 April 2007
Georgina, Dominic and Harry are in a Starbucks style coffee shop. Georgina and Dominic are drinking coffee and discussing Dominic's obsessive stalking of his ex wife because of her determination to castrate Sid - their cat. Harry isn't smelling the coffee or joining the conversations. Harry is asleep.
Harry is a narcoleptic - he falls asleep suddenly (sometimes conveniently). In his waking hours he is a business man who makes pies out of pure organic meat. Though richer than the other two, who are both vegetarians, his business is failing because he spends so much time in the coffee shop - sleeping. Either that or seducing any woman that crosses his path, playing out his theory that mankind's only concern is food and sex.
Harry receives a message from his mad ex wife Hannie (Helen Lederer). Hannie is a blonde man-eater - literally. She has toured the world savouring meats from different animals and now has an unacceptable proposition to make to Harry.
Helen Lederer is that rare creature, a true eccentric - a Hermione Gingold for our time - and she plays on here comic timing and mannerisms to great effect. She is well matched by Daniel Hill as Harry - sleepy head, womaniser and gourmet (although what he is doing lunching off Starbucks sandwiches is beyond me). Charles Armstrong is effective as the luckless, ineffectual Dominic who enters into a situation from which he finds it hard to extricate himself. The delightful Clare Kissane is Georgina, his coffee shop cohort and fellow vegetarian who finds herself attracted to the wicked meat-man Harry.
Ninon Jerome directs with a sure hand and makes the most of her opportunities and all the actors play well together. Norman Coates has created a mini Starbucks complete with leather furniture, African masks and large animal tapestries which help to point out the main concept of the play.
There is a confusion of style and attitude ranging from bawdy farce to black comedy with bits of philosophy thrown in. But the dialogue flows well and there are hilarious and sometimes quite tender moments. A rude and jolly evening. [Aline Waites]