Reviews
Higher Ground
Until 13 Mar 2010
Review by Fran Edwards
Biscuit is a strange name for a girl, designed to build character? Coffee, of course, goes very well with any biscuit and this is no exception.
Amid the wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee, Alex Ellis presents this well written script. Each of the six characters she portrays is well defined and she slips from one to the next with consummate ease.
The audience is never confused about which character Alex is playing at any particular moment. While the story explores the elixir of life, the perfect coffee, the audience craved to share the java being enjoyed on stage.
The technical aspects of this production have been well thought out, the lighting, sound and setting all complement the story. Director Phil Ormsby has made sure we get all the flavour as the story takes us full circle to a very satisfying ending. And the biscuit was delicious!
Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)
The Dominion Post, Thursday March 2 2006
Coffee drama takes biscuit for solo act
WHAT: Biscuit and Coffee, written and directed by Phil Ormsby
WHERE: Bats Theatre till March 4
REVIEWED BY: Ewen Coleman
WELLINGTON’S coffee culture has been immortalised on stage in previous Fringe Festival productions, but coffee as the elixir of life and it’s defining effect on the lives of six people has never been portrayed in the way it is in Biscuit and Coffee, the early evening production playing at Bats.
It’s another of the many solo pieces in this year’s Fringe 06, this time performed by Alex Ellis, who, in conjunction with writer-director Phil Ormsby, plays out in masterly fashion the story of Biscuit and her coffee fetish, surrounded by various pieces of coffee-making paraphernalia.
The only child of a boring, bland couple who die in extraordinary circumstances, Biscuit is left in the care of her grandmother and Uncle Dan. She eventually becomes an accountant like her father, then meets and moves in with Jude, a nerd trying to make the perfect brew of coffee.
What happens next becomes somewhat absurdist and though the piece overall is a little too long it’s a well-written script with punchy dialogue and clever wordplay that allows Ellis to exhibit her considerable acting skills with confidence and style, slipping in and out of character better probably than any solo performer at this festival.
The final moments of the play where she plays all six characters within the space of a minute or two is quite extraordinary.
‘Waikato Times’ Thursday October 6, 2005
WHAT: Biscuit and Coffee
WHERE: The Meteor Theatre
WHEN: October 5-8
REVIEWED BY: Gail Pittaway
I rarely drink coffee after 5pm these days. However, I’m glad I succumbed to the brew on the way into this show: the onstage aromas were enticing enough; without the real thing they’d have been positively distracting. And Alex Ellis’ performance is well worth staying up all night over. She is a stunner.
Biscuit and Coffee takes café culture to cult status as the eponymous heroine, Biscuit, daughter of bland bureaucrats, turns her life around and stretches out each moment through the seductive power of the brown bean.
It is a life full of incident, but retold so that tragedies such as her parents’ accidental deaths by flocks of sheep (Romneys in fact), are delightfully funny.
Ellis bends, stretches and weaves her way through half a dozen characters, some in matters of minutes, in recounting the effect of coffee on the lives of Biscuit’s nearest, and those not so dear.
She is such a character contortionist that you wonder what her real face looks like at times. There’s the family, the boyfriend, the boss and the boarding school chum – Loretta, whose attitude to reconstructive surgery is as devoted as the coffee-cult conspirators.
Phil Ormsby’s direction and writing give a refreshing addition to New Zealand theatre. It’s a huge lot of fun, with some very good lines about language and living in the mix – along with some bizarre coffee recipes.
Hawke’s Bay Today, Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Hour and Quarter of pure genius
Biscuit and Coffee
Written and Directed by Phil Ormsby
Starring Alex Ellis
CinemaGold, Havelock North
Tuesday, June 28
Reviewed by Katherine Stewart
Accountants: what intriguing people! That got your attention. But hear me out; accountants are intriguing.
Biscuit is a successor in a long line of number-crunchers – her “fiscal whakapapa”. In an effort to rebel against this potentially harmful legacy, she decides to counter-rebel by becoming an accountant herself (now that’s rebellious). This sets up a fantastic basis through which to juxtapose the other main characters, all exceptionally played by Ellis.
There is Loretta, Biscuit’s boarding school alumnus, who has had elocution lessons to within an inch of her life, is addicted to plastic surgery and on medication – for stress caused by being rich.
Uncle Dan, by contrast, is a wily conspiracy theorist, who convinces Biscuit that coffee can, in fact, grant eternal life. These two are joined by Jude, aka Desmond, Biscuit’s freaked-out barista boyfriend, desperate to unleash the powers of the bean as espoused by Dan, and finally Grandmother, full of reprimands about the dangers of living outside the square.
Not that accountants live in squares. In fact, in this story it seems they are in some kind of cosmic loop, as the powers of the bean are unleashed one night in Biscuit’s “hermetically sealed” bedroom, where Jude/Desmond, after much experimentation, has finally discovered the key to everlasting life.
While the plot sounds absurd, it functions as a means of showcasing Ellis and writer/director Ormsby’s considerable acting and writing skills respectively. In a scene where five characters face off, Ellis effortlessly slips in and out of all five in 60 seconds. She is Brilliant.
The pared set and static lighting ensure all eyes are on Ellis and all ears on the considerable dialogue – an hour and a quarter solid.
This play continues in Dannevirke (Fountain Theatre, tomorrow) and Waipukurau (Waipukurau Little Theatre, July 1).
See it: it’s pure genius.